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Captivate Update

February 25, 2011

I just looked at AT&T's recommended update process for the Samsung Captivate. First, let's get the obvious out of the way: the update takes the Captivate, a phone less than a year old, from Android 2.1 to 2.2. The latest stable version for phones is 2.3, so this update doesn't really bring the phone "up to date", but let's get back to the main problem.

Android has a built-in over-the-air update process. Go to Settings→About phone→System software updates. It's simple, direct, and no PC is required. Alas, this system is disabled on the Captivate. Instead the update process is as difficult as rooting your phone. Not only is the method Windows only, it requires 32 bit Windows! Worse, users are directed to disable firewalls and anti-virus software.

Um, no thank you. Unless you have a Nexus phone, it seems that the best way to get timely updates for your Android phone is to root it, and depend on the developer community.

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Empty and Broken

February 23, 2011

Apparently the :empty pseudo-class is (still?) broken in Chrome, as of version 9. p:empty {display:none;} results in every p being hidden, whether it's empty or not.

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Pa. teacher strikes nerve with 'lazy whiners' blog

February 16, 2011

"Parents are more trying to be their kids' friends and less trying to be their parent," Munroe said, also noting students' lack of patience. "They want everything right now. They want it yesterday."

Call me old-fashioned, but if this is how an English teacher speaks, maybe she should have been fired long ago.

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Name That (Smartphone) Price

February 06, 2011

With the brand new HTC Inspire about to debut with a rumored on-contract price of $99.99, one has to wonder how much a high-end smartphone really should cost sans contract. I think we can all agree $100 is quite low for a state-of-the art smartphone. The carrier subsidy here is pretty obvious. I haven't seen the off-contract pricing for the Inspire yet, but I'm guessing it will be around $600, or so. I just don't think this is reasonable.

It's fairly rare for cell phone carriers to offer their prepaid customers the same phones that are available to postpaid customers. When they do, it's usually a model that has been out for some time. Still look at the current price of Sprint's Samsung Intercept without contract, compared to the prepaid version on Virgin Mobile. Check out the Sprint Optimus S and the Virgin Mobile Optimus V. That's right, the prepaid phones are over $100 cheaper than the same postpaid phone sans contract.

Don't get me wrong, I like carrier subsidies as much as the next person, but it's becoming increasingly clear that no smartphone can remain current in terms of specs and power for the life of a two year contract (especially with carriers' reluctance to push out timely updates). It's nice to be rewarded (with subsidized pricing) for renewing one's contract every two years. Wouldn't it would be nice not to be penalized for getting the smartphone you want to use with that contract?

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The Vocal Minority

February 03, 2011

The new spate of AT&T network bashing that has accompanied the introduction of Apple's iPhone for Verizon has me rereading David Sleight's blog post analyzing the feedback from a major redesign. The entire post is very good, and you should read it in its entirety, but what particularly grabbed my attention was the last paragraph:

During an interesting chat Chris Fahey set me on the right track by pointing out something I’d overlooked: Negatives want to affect [sic] change, Positives are confirming assent. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but he’s absolutely right, and it explains a lot about their respective behavior. Negatives have the motivation to act since they want something done. Positives stay mum because, ultimately, they want nothing done.

The description of "Negatives" as users who want to effect change seems generally applicable to many situations in which it is difficult to get hard data to support an argument. It seems particularly applicable to situations widely reported by technology-oriented media. Sure, there are plenty of "AT&T drops calls, Verizon's network is better" blog posts, and a ton of "me too" comments on those posts, but do the posters and commentors represent any kind of majority of network users, or could they be a very vocal minority? An informal (and statistically insignificant) poll of friends and family who have AT&T feel that their service is entirely satisfactory. Some reported frequent dropped calls and spotty coverage in particular areas. The thing is, conducting the same poll with friends and family on Verizon netted the same results. In the end, physical location was the most important factor in cell phone carrier performance.

As an exercise in curiosity, I did a few quick queries on Google hoping to get an idea of how much of a link there was between the iPhone and AT&T's perceived network deficiencies. It's a decidedly unscientific experiment at best, but it seems to me there is a pretty strong link.

AT&T dropped calls (254,000)
AT&T dropped calls -iphone (82,000)
AT&T dropped calls -verizon (108,000)
at&t dropped calls -iphone -verizon (48,100)

Verizon dropped calls (254,000)
verizon dropped calls -AT&T (97,600)
verizon dropped calls -iphone (85,500)
verizon dropped calls -iphone -at&t (51,300)

sprint dropped calls (170,000)
sprint dropped calls -iphone (78,000)

The number in parentheses is the number of results returned by Google for each query. As I said this little experiment is far from conclusive, but there is clearly a link between

Then, there is the iPhone 4 antenna problem. Shortly after the iPhone 4 was released, reports of a problem with the antenna surfaced, and quickly became huge news. How many people really suffered from the "flaw" in Apple's design? As Engadget's Nilay Patel reports, "...Apple's sold well over two million iPhone 4s, and [Engadget simply hasn't] heard the sort of outcry from users that [they'd] normally hear if a product this high-profile and this popular had a showstopping defect."

In the end, the vocal minority is going to have its say, but don't forget to look at the big picture.

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