I have 2x New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers and 2x Philips SCE4430/05 battery chargers.

The New Trent 5000mAh will give me about 40% extra power on my iPad (which already enjoys a massive 10 hours battery power), or I can get around 3x full charges of my iPhone 4.

The Philips SCE4430/05 which I have previously mentioned here and here, will give me around 1x full charge of an iPhone 4. I actually do have 3x of these and not 2, although one requires a reverse adapter (which I conveniently forget) so I tend to not use this one so much.

So in essence if I take all 4x battery chargers out I can get a massive 8x full charges of an iPhone. For the most part I never usually have to charge up my iPad as I’m never away for more than 10 hours from an electrical plug socket, but it’s nice to know I have some power on tap if I need it.

For the most part if I’m only out and about for a few hours then I’ll take my Philips SCE4430/05 with me, or if I’m out for 5+ hours then I’ll carry around the New Trent 5000mAh charger. I usually keep at least one in the car, so if I need to I can run back to the car to get additional juice.

The great thing I like about both of these battery chargers is they have a standard USB socket on them, so pretty much any USB cable you have for a phone or gadget will connect into these devices. So no real need for these attachment bits that some chargers come with (and that you always happen to lose).

The Philips SCE4430/05 is great for putting into your shirt pocket with ease, the New Trent will fit into your shirt pocket and it’s the same dimensions of the iPhone 4, but a little heavier, so although you could put your iPhone 4 and New Trent charger into the same shirt pocket, it does look a bit on the bulky side.

I always pack at least one of the New Trent 5000mAh battery chargers into a bag I carry whether it’s an iPad bag, gadget bag or even my Messenger (over the shoulder) Laptop bag or rucksack. That way I always have something available fully charged and ready to go just in case I ever need it. You’d be surprised the amount of times you think, I’m running low on battery or I need a quick top-up. Whether it’s in meetings where you might have plug sockets but no charger plug lead to being out in the street, out on location photographing something or at a friends house.

Before I get flamed by a bunch of Android users, let me say that I have both iOS and Android devices. The first reason is that Apple had a head start. Apple is an innovator and although it wasn’t the first to create a tablet, it was most certainly the first to create a tablet that just worked out of the box, with a complete ecosystem.

Apple have the right ecosystem, they have 400,000+ apps at time of writing this, Android have around 200,000 apps and Apple had a head start in the tablet arena over Google.

The biggest thing after talking to both Apple and Google fans that everyone seems to want is a device that’s upgradable. This is one thing that Apple gives all customers for a good 3-4 years. If you take a look at the iPhone 3G it’s still popular and upgraded to iOS 3, iOS 4. Okay, maybe it won’t be supported by iOS 5 perhaps, but there’s a good 3 years usage out of the device. Now take a look at Android. Samsung botched most of their upgrades for the Samsung Galaxy S, most customers couldn’t upgrade their devices because you had to connect it to Samsung Kies PC software, which just didn’t work properly.

Take a look at Sony Xperia devices, most of these wouldn’t see the light of day for an upgrade. Likewise some HTC devices although more lately have been upgradable, it’s only been because of customer pressure. HTC weren’t going to upgrade some of their phones to Gingerbread until customers forced them.

People want a device that isn’t going to be a brick or die of death in a year or two. Although people change their devices they still want to be able to use them or sell them and get a good return. This is the big problem so far with Android, it’s down to the manufacturer and sometimes not even the manufacturer, sometimes it’s down to both the manufacturer and the mobile operator. Where some customers see upgrades in some countries for a given device but not in others, or sometimes some in the same country get an update where others on another network don’t.

Another good reason as to why Apple have such a good run at the tablet market is if you take a look at other manufacturers, Microsoft still after all these years haven’t produced a single tablet (well if you exclude the WinCe devices), and look at HP, they’ve been in this market space several times in the last decade and pulled out. Palm although they weren’t yet competing in the tablet market, were in the mobile market with WebOS which was then bought up by HP, HP then decided to take part in the tablet industry (again), and have now recently decided it’s going to pull out of the tablet market.

Customers also want a device that’s going to work out of the box, not be complicated to use. Apple have this down to a tee. Likewise if you have previously owned an iPod Touch or iPhone then there’s a zero learning curve if you go to the iPad. With Android however, although it works out of the box, there’s a lot of customisation that can be done, things that can be accidentally turned on and off, or from a user perspective (broken) and that also puts off the non-technical users.

Apple have aimed their sales not at the technical user, but the non-technical user, where Android manufacturers seem a lot of the time to be targeting their products at the self confessed techy.

The other thing to think about is it’s fine to provide a device for every single kind of person out there, but this creates massive fragmentation in the operating system. That in turn makes games and apps break, not just once or twice but regularly. Bad news spreads quicker than good news, and although Apple don’t provide things like flash, the average person out there believes the devices tend to be more stable.

It’s also interesting to see how tablet manufacturer’s try to advertise their product. I have to smile when I keep seeing this advert for the Asus Eee Transformer where they actually show the tablet on the TV advert running out of battery. No worry, just plug it into the keyboard to restore some power. If you have a tablet that is capable of something like 10 hours battery power like the iPad, why would you even want to think about advertising that it WILL run out of battery power? That immediately puts me off buying the Asus tablets and I’m sure it puts off a lot of other people too.

At some point the eco seesaw will change, and it may tip in Googles favour or other manufacturers favour, but currently it’s still tipped towards Apple.

However, your device is only as good as your last update. Having a device that won’t upgrade to the latest Operating System version is of pretty no use to you. Why? Because these mobile operating systems move quickly and anyone that doesn’t keep their phone updated to the latest mobile OS means that apps and games stop working because they drop support for older OS versions pretty quickly.

For regular readers you’ll know I have iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad but likewise I also have a HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S, so I have devices from both platforms – Android and iOS so get to experience the nirvana of both.

Apple provide a mobile OS upgrade every 3-4 months, they don’t provide it OTA (Over The Air) as you have to connect your iPhone to iTunes to download and install it. Although this can be a hassle and I would much prefer to download it OTA over WiFi or 3G, it’s an easy process, it works well. iTunes backs up the device first – just in case the update crashes the phone so you can restore it, giving you the best of both worlds.

For Android you receive your updates OTA (Over The Air) – no need to connect your device to a PC or Mac to get your updates. However, your phone doesn’t get backed up so if something does go wrong, then you’re to put it likely going to have a bricked phone. That said, the percentage of bricked Android phones from failed updates are so small you never really hear about it being a problem.

For me the biggest problem is how to get the updates. App and Game developers update their apps to support the newer OS versions and drop support for the older OS versions, mainly because they can’t have devices running on every OS version to test as it would be a nightmare. With Apple, they push out an update every 3 or 4 months and EVERYONE in the world gets the update to install. No matter what network or which country you are in, you get the choice to get the update and install it, and all at the same time (albeit maybe a few hours different).

Here’s where the problem comes with Android. You have Google who write the OS, the manufacturer that creates the phone and the mobile network / cellular provider, e.g. AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon/O2/Orange. So what happens on Android is Google says…Hey, there’s a new OS version out, please push this out to all your users. The hardware manufacturer can block the update going out and not provide it to customers of their phones for whatever reason they see fit. If they do agree to allow the updated Google OS update out, then the mobile operator can also block it and say they don’t want the update to go out to it’s customers.

So, what happens with Android? Most customers don’t get the updates when they should. HTC Android customers in UK get updates at different dates to say French or German or Italian or US customers. Likewise some manufacturers like Samsung block the updates. Or even if the update doesn’t get blocked then the mobile operator then can block it or delay the release date further. This completely fragments Android to the point that a lot of Android customers still get devices that can’t be updated.

Take Samsung with the Galaxy S. US customers received updates pretty quickly but they were staggered across the mobile operator networks, some European customers then received the Froyo 2.2 update a few months later. I’m still waiting for 2.2 and am stuck on 2.1, 6 months later due to Samsung not rolling out the update properly to customers. My device shouldn’t be blocked by a mobile operator because, it’s an unlocked device, I paid around £499 unlocked, yet thanks to Samsung’s terrible update policy because I paid a larger sum of money compared to others that got there’s a lot cheaper on a locked network, I’m stuck behind on 2.1. So no joy in receiving the Froyo 2.2 update, most likely no joy in receiving the Gingerbread 2.3 update and likewise I doubt I’ll get Honeycomb 3.0.

If Google with mobile operators don’t get a handle on this soon this will absolutely kill the Android market. There are so many customers out there angry because they’re not getting the updates they need. With Apple although not ideal having to connect to iTunes, it works, everyone gets the update and the only OS version fragmentation are down to customers that choose themselves not to update to the latest iOS update.

Although there are a number of tablets out there running Android OS 2.1 Eclair or Android OS 2.2 Froyo, they’re not designed to be run on a larger screen and have a maximum limit of a 7″ screen. Android is basically stretched to fit which creates all sorts of performance issues. Android 3.0 Honeycomb should overcome that.

The first look at the LG T-Mobile G-Slate although looks promising looks very slow in it’s transitions between screens, but time will tell whether this will compete with the iPad.

We will be working on the Android and iPad My3 apps early next year. No confirmed dates at the mo. Will keep everyone posted.

There is already an iPhone app available although it really doesn’t do much other than give you a portal opening to the My3 page which then opens up in a separate Safari window.

It will be interesting to see if this is just a port of the iPhone app or whether it will have more features than the current iPhone app.

3 are embracing the new mobile devices quite quickly and are now selling iPad’s and Android phones to compliment the iPhone 4.

In the past few months I have had over 1000 people ask me whether they should purchase the latest Samsung Galaxy S Android phone, the latest Samsung Galaxy Tab or the latest Samsung Windows Phone 7. The answer that I provide through personal experience in shelling out my own hard earned money is a very simple “No”.

Why? Well it’s quite simple, Samsung do not adhere to the operating system standard. Take the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab, to gain operating system updates you have to download a very large piece of software from Samsung called Kies. Probably named after Keys, in other words it opens the doors to your product. Unfortunately for Samsung it does the opposite and will never connect to a Samsung product. It opens up to about 150mb of installed program, it then installs every conceivable driver for every single Samsung product on the face of this earth onto your computer, messes up your USB stack and then fails to connect to Samsung’s own devices.

What most Android manufacturers do is follow the Google standard which is to supply updates over the air (OTA) via the Google deployment mechanism, Samsung choose to do it “their way”. I wouldn’t mind “their way” if it worked, but it doesn’t, it adds unnecessary drivers to your PC and fails to carry out the job that it was intended to do, create a simple mechanism to connect to the device and update the device.

After 9 calls to Samsung UK call centre [more here] that is outsourced to the Middle East, being greeted by people who cannot speak English, cannot understand the English accent and certainly do not know anything about how the Samsung products work, let alone how the Samsung Kies application works, it becomes very frustrating and tiresome. Personally I have wasted over £100 trying to talk to Samsung, putting that into perspective that’s 25% of the product price wasted on support.

Samsung would probably like to tell you I am an isolated case and “this isn’t the norm” and that “many Samsung customers do not have a problem”.

Taking a look at Twitter just for today, here’s just a few tweets from other angry Samsung customers in the same situation to me…

@DaztheJack 1 pot of coffee down & still not able to hook my Galaxy upto ‘Kies’ for the #froyo update. Samsung wankers.

@jadedmoonstudio Samsung Kies failed install: -1. No OTA updates for Samsung Galaxy S: -1. Hopefully Nexus S doesnt have this desktop pc dependency.

@samsunggalaxy_s Re: KIES will not upgrade I9000XXJP2: Anyone else encountered this problem? http://bit.ly/9eYxYg

@robertfall Where the hell is froyo for the Galaxy S in SA!? Thought it would show up in Kies… Nope.

@craig_dallimore To connect galaxy s to kies, delete all files with 16 character file extensions, then wish upon a star.

@SoorajB Is 2.2 update ready for Samsung Galaxy S. Kies still says : The device’s version cannot be updated. [I have JG4]

You would have to think that Samsung would

1. Be aware of this problem by now
2. Be able to fix the problem with Samsung Kies
3. Be able to connect Samsung Kies to a Samsung Device
4. Be able to deploy an update through Samsung Kies to a Samsung Device
5. Be able to have their Technical Support speak in the language of the caller in the country of the caller

Unfortunately 3 months on, the answer to the above 5 questions are………NO!

So, if you read any of reviews here and want to ask me a question on what I think of Samsung products, I will pass you to this news article so you can read how Samsung treats its customers.

…and on the subject of how Samsung treats its customers, I would also like to add that the reason why I am hitting into this problem with Samsung, Kies and the Galaxy S is because Samsung also rushed the Galaxy S to market in ALPHA stage, meaning that the GPS receiver fails to work 80% of the time on the device.  The only way to receive the alleged fix according to Samsung is to download the update over Samsung Kies and deploy to the Samsung Galaxy S.  After reading the above, I’m sure you’ll see why that isn’t possible

Good job Samsung for ruining what would have been a decent product!

eBooks get bad publicity because for the most part you can’t share them although some libraries that support eBooks are letting you do this now, but with Kindle whatever device you have, you’re never without your book. It goes to show that DRM can work if it’s implemented correctly for most people. The best part is I don’t even own a Kindle device, but if I were to then the eBooks would sync to that too without a problem.

Boy was that a mistake.

Call 1 (Tom) – Problem #1 – Wanting to know when the GPS fix would be available, 1st agent couldn’t tell me but said it would be sometime soon, and when I asked if it would fix the problems with the crappy GPS receiver in the device as a lot of AT&T customers already say they have received the fix and it hasn’t his remark was “I don’t know sir”.

Call 1 – Problem #2 – Samsung Kies will never connect to the Samsung Galaxy S, ever.  After exhausting uninstall and reinstall of Kies, uninstall and reinstall of USB drivers, the 1st agent put me on hold and then cut me off.

Okay, wasn’t happy but understand these things can sometimes happen and it probably wasn’t intentional.  So I placed a call again, sat in line waiting in the queue, got answered by the 2nd support rep.  Decided to cut to the chase and skip problem #1 as that was a futile effort and lets focus on problem #2.

Call 2 (Didn’t provide his name) – Problem 2, Support Rep tried to walk me through uninstalling and reinstall Kies and the USB drivers, even though I told him I had already tried this twice myself prior to calling Samsung and also with the previous agent who cut me off.  He then said he can’t hear me and couldn’t understand me (I believe he had a strong Spanish / European accent) and then cut me off midstream as I was talking to him.

Okay, now I’m pretty annoyed, that’s 2x call cut-offs to Samsung’s World Class Technical Support.  Right, I’m not taking this lying down, so I call back and get a 3rd agent this time.

Call 3 (Menna) – Go through same rigmarole again of trying to uninstall and reinstall Samsung Kies and the USB drivers, and still doesn’t work.  She asks me to try it again (this is now the 5th time) and even though I had told her that I’ve tried this on 3x other PC’s and I’m having the same thing, she asked me to try it for the 5th time (maybe we’ll get lucky) and then told me to call back if it didn’t work.

Call 4 – I call back and ask to speak to a supervisor, explained my position and I was denied to be transferred.

Samsung IT DOESN’T WORK!  Your products are terrible, your Support is the worst support I’ve had to deal with in the last 12 months!  When are you going to fix your products and fix your support??? I spent over 3 hours on your support lines to be cut off 3x times and to be told my case would not be escalated.

If anyone wishes to contact me from Samsung to discuss the poor support then please feel free to do so.

If Samsung want to see other customer complaints, then look below…

Samsung GPS problems not fixed

18 pages of Forum posts in customers not getting Samsung Kies to work…!

There looks to be support added for the following countries in the very near future…
Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Singapore, Sweden and South Africa

Currently Google already has support for up to 14 paid country market places and adding another 15 will take that to 29. This should be a welcome addition for app developers being able to reach a whole new market share in different countries.

Although the official email that went out to developers didn’t include any mention of country specifics as seen below, Android Community had uncovered these from Distimo Analytics.

Hello,
We’re writing to inform you about some changes to Android Market that require your attention.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be adding paid apps support for additional countries. If you have selected to publish your paid apps to all locations and intend to support all new locations as we expand the number of supported countries for paid apps, you don’t have to do anything. If you have selected to publish your paid apps to all locations but intend to only target the currently supported 14 countries, please update your location selections to target these specific countries.

Please look for follow-up emails when we introduce paid apps support for specific additional countries in the coming weeks. At that time, you’ll have the option to target these specific countries.

Thanks, and we look forward to continue working with you on Android Market.

Sincerely,
The Android Market Team
Google, Inc. 1600
Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

The “bloatware” being pushed out is called Vodafone’s “360″ services. Vodafone 360 adds a bunch of Vodafone-branded “apps” and widgets to the your device which are impossible to uninstall (unless you then root your device). Customers say they wouldn’t mind this so much providing they could uninstall the apps and widgets, but unfortunately they cannot be uninstalled.

It’s a shame that Vodafone are taking this approach, ultimately customers will start to learn these practices and decide to go away from Vodafone when their contract ends.

“confirming, this morning my unrooted, standard phone went through the JH7 update with no issues, but the GPS behavior has not changed in any way – same no lock situation after minutes and minutes of waiting for a lock. In fact my phone discharged in half day today because of all the GPS activity and testing.”
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“Lock time may be improved, but it’s still not accurate enough to use it for anything other than finding out what may be near your location.

I updated today and I was in the car this evening but not driving so I had chance to load My Tracks and watch it as we went down the road. It wasn’t near the road at times, and when we stopped at a light it continued going down the road for a while before it realized that we had stopped and did some crazy loop to get back to near where we were.”
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“I cannot get a lock, period. Maybe it’s where I’m at. I was on the phone with AT&T, they transfer me to Samsung, whoever I’m speaking with at Samsung has ZERO clue and now I’m being transferred to second level. WTH is THIS all about?”
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“In summary, for two months of work, this is a poor showing at best. Get an IPhone or an older phone and it will outperform this phone in a heartbeat. On a final note, dealing with Samsung support is scary, they have no clue what they are delivering or what is needed to address a problem.”
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“I owned Nokias before, and also used other people’s old iphones. I really knew nothing about gps and took it for granted then because it just WORKED.

Never would I have ever imagined that a “high end” smartphone would have gps problems like this, or that some people would be saying, “Yeah it’s just the way gps is.”"
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“I can’t get a lock. Turning off use Wifi/network and running GPS test shows satellites but never shows that I am using a satellite, and no lock is possible in Gmaps.”
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So in summary it looks like even after receiving the latest update for Captivate, many Captivate customers are still experiencing GPS problems in both getting a GPS fix but more importantly retaining the GPS fix.

Still though for the rest of us, including UK and European users there is still no GPS fix available. Samsung need to hold true to their word and push out an update to other Samsung customers.

Samsung have also recently announced on Twitter that the Froyo 2.2 Android update that was also going to be released in September has now been pushed to October.

Many people in the tech industry are wondering whether Samsung are hitting into software problems and whether the Galaxy Tab will be spared the GPS plague that was unleased onto Samsung customers.

On the topic of the Galaxy S there’s still no update for most of the Samsung Galaxy S owners experiencing problems although Samsung did release an update to Captivate users but still no claims from users yet whether it has rectified the GPS problems or not.

Suggestions are that this new tablet is going to be an impressive device supporting a 1280×720 (720p) resolution using a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor with capacitive multi-touch screen. Also to include up to 32gb Solid State Disk, 2gb RAM, and all the normal features like WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.

HTC don’t do devices without cellphone usage and although there’s been no mention on whether it may or may not sport a 3G chip, the chances are that it most probably will. The rumours suggest that HTC will be releasing the tablet in early 2011 running the latest Android 3.0 Gingerbread. Although Chrome OS might also be a contender and I wouldn’t rule that out yet.