@davidgilson‘s comment on drag-and-drop vs Zune is epic “The whole idea of a desktop suite being less geeky than drag n drop is utter tosh!”

— Alvin Wong (@alv1nW) January 21, 2012

Surely this can’t go on forever — even with power saving technologies, eventually our processing power on these mobile devices will be bound by the electrical charge that they depend on. Without significant advances in battery and charging technologies, we’ll hit an uncomfortable dead end. So what’s next for charging and energy storage?

So we all have a fairly good grasp on this kind of charging: there’s a lithium polymer or lithium ion battery inside the case that stores electrical charge in a lithium-salt electrolyte in a solid polymer compound or organic solvent, respectively. As the phone is used, the charge is depleted. When you plug in your phone via USB or an AC adapter, the electrical charge is restored.

Not very interesting, so let’s move onto fresher fare: wireless charging and (later) micro-supercapacitors.

Wireless charging

Wireless charging is a rather interesting proposition that’s received some main-stream attention, thanks to a few well publicised TED talks and even some real products.

The first thing to know about wireless charging is that it generally comes in one of two forms: close-range induction charging and long-range near field magnetic resonance (NFMR).

A commerically available wireless phone charger.

Induction charging requires two pieces, a charger station and a device to be charged. The charger station (typically a charging mat) contains a large coil of wire, which produces a small magnetic field when a current is passed through it. When the second coil, found in the smartphone, comes into contact with the field, it induces a current to pass through the second coil. It’s essentially the same idea as a normal power transformer, except the two coils act as a transformer with an air ‘core’.

The problem with induction charging is that it’s quite inefficient – only a fraction of the power used makes it to the device being charged. It also only works in very close proximity, when the two coils are almost touching. Because of this, the second form of near field magnetic resonance has the potential to be much better.

NFMR is powered by a low power magnetic resonator, which produces a much stronger magnetic field than an induction charger but only on a given frequency. Then the device to be charged has to tune in to the frequency of the magnetic field in order to be charged. This grants much higher efficiency (roughly 90%), making it comparable to wired charging methods. It also increases the size of the magnetic field, meaning you could have a charging zone the size of a desktop instead of the size of a mouse pad.

As you can see in the video above, it works quite well. The big down side to NFMR is that it’s still relatively expensive to produce the apparatus required. One major player that’s looking into magnetic resonance charging is Apple, who published a patent in May entitled ‘Wireless Power Utilization in a Local Computer Environment.’

It envisions a laptop or desktop with a built-in resonator or USB resonator, which produces a field large enough to cover the whole desk. The field could charge phones as well as wireless peripherals like the the Bluetooth keyboards and mice that Apple are so very fond of. The system also allows the devices to automatically tune themselves into the field when they enter it, then detune when they’re fully charged.

A diagram showing how NFMR charging works. A magnetic coil is housed in a box (1), and resonates at a certain frequency (2). The electromagnetic waves produced (3) travel to another magnetic coil (4) fitted into a laptop resonates at the same frquency and absorbs energy, charging the device (5).

Micro-supercapacitors

Supercapacitors are electrochemical capacitors that sit between traditional capacitors and traditional batteries in terms of the trade-off between energy density and power density, as they store energy as an electrical charge instead of in chemical reactants.

They typically offer lower charge capacity than traditional batteries, but can transfer that charge much faster, giving a greater power density overall. They do tend to suffer from dielectric absorption (i.e. an incomplete discharge) and high rates of self-discharge (i.e. discharging when not in use). The voltage also drops significantly as the supercapacitor discharges. They’re also quite expensive, although of course this is a common feature of most all new technologies.

The tradeoffs between energy density and power density for supercapacitors (labelled as 'ultracapacitors' on the graph).

These challenges which must be overcome to allow mainstream use. Micro-supercapacitors are one evolution of the supercapacitor concept which do look to minimise these disadvantages. They are essentially supercapacitors that have been constructed with micro-fabrication methods, which are more commonly used to construct microchips.

They can be constructed with monolithic carbon film electrodes etched into conduction titanium carbide, ultimately resulting in a micro-supercapacitor that has twice as much energy density as a normal supercapacitor. This brings the balance between energy density and power density more towards a traditional battery, minimising the traditional disadvantages of a supercapacitor.

Due to their smaller size, they could also potentially be integrated into the subsystems of devices they power, making them a kind of specialised battery delivering power at the specific voltages required, without having to spend energy converting. They also have a much longer cycle life, meaning they’d last dramatically longer than typical Lithium batteries.

Drexel University's Dr. Yury Gogotsi (right), part of the team responsible for developing micro-supercapacitors.

Still, this kind of technology is still quite far away from mainstream use. While micro-supercapacitors could be combined with micro-batteries to produce a more viable technology in the short term, full micro-supercapacitors with enough energy storage to operate effectively may be some decades away.

It’s an exciting future ahead of us — even in the outwardly mundane field of energy storage and transfer, there are big things afoot.

Personally, I’m looking forward to a future where my wirelessly charged game controllers work seamlessly with my portable micro-supercapacitor-powered HDTV in my back garden. That’d make writing articles quite difficult, but I bet that fresh air would improve my kill-death ratio in Call of Duty 26.

This article was written by William Judd. William is a writer for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of the kindle cover, including the new kindle cover and the kindle cover with light.

To an extent, this is indeed true – there are a variety of ways in which you can improve battery performance, and the best of these won’t change how you use your smartphone. Read on to discover five ways you can improve your phone’s battery life!

1. Turn off non-essential services

The number one killer of smartphone batteries are unwanted and unneeded services running rampant. These are things like WiFi, mobile data, Bluetooth and GPS. It’s often wise to only make use of these services when you need them, and have them turned them off at all other times. Even if you’re not using the service, they may be working in the background, continually scanning for networks, satellites or other devices. So shut them off via the Settings menu of your phone.

JuiceDefender's profile options

You can also use applications like JuiceDefender to automatically turn off 3G and WiFi when these services aren’t in use.

2. Adjust brightness

Most smartphones these days have this handy feature, which utilises a brightness sensor to adjust your phone’s display to your ambient environment. The brighter the environment you are in, the brighter your phone has to be to keep up. If you’re using your phone out of direct sunlight or at night, then auto-brightness can help keep the power down.

Enable automatic brightness by going to Settings – > Display Settings -> Brightness in Android. For iPhone, go to Settings -> Brightness.

Setting a custom display brightness in Android

If this isn’t enough, take full control. Manually set your phone to its lowest brightness setting that you can read, and only increase it when you have to.

3. Upgrade to the latest firmware

There are many instances in which excessive battery drain was caused by a bug in the phone’s operating system.

Apple is currently fixing this problem with the first patch to iOS 5, after location services were mistakenly being activated much more often than they should have been.

Checking for a software update in Android

Always ensure that both your operating system and apps are kept up to date. As well as ensuring you’re not using more battery than you should, you’ll also get new features and protection from security exploits.

4. Close battery-draining apps

On Android, this is a relatively simple procedure. Simply go to Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Use. There you’ll find a clever list which shows precisely how much battery life is being consumed by each app, as well as other services such as the display or the mobile connection.

For Apple, it’s more complex, but you can figure things out with a bit of common sense. Any application that uses 3D rendered images (e.g. games) or makes extensive use of your Wi-Fi or data network will drain more battery than apps that don’t connect to the Internet or have 3D graphics.

Apps running in the background can still use your mobile’s data connection or CPU, draining the battery. This is especially common in apps like email, chat and RSS. Turn off push support for these apps, and instead fetch messages from the server every hour or so instead.

Android's useful Battery Use screen

To close down background apps on iOS, double click the home button. A second dock will appear, with icons representing apps running in the background. Just hold down on an app until it has begun to jiggle in fear, then press the red minus symbol to close it.

On Android, just go back to the Battery Use app (or Settings -> Applications -> Running Services, or Task Manager if you have it) and click on a task to select it, then hit stop (or exit).

5. Purchase a battery-extending mobile accessory

If you’ve tried everything and just can’t wring enough juice out of your smartphone, then it might be time to get physical. You can extend your battery life by one of a few ways:

a) An external battery pack that stores extra charge separately, letting you recharge on the go. These can be an ideal solution as you only need to connect the battery pack when you’re running low, where other solutions will be a permanent addition or replacement. The amount of stored charge is also quite high, as the whole device can be devoted to storing charge instead of having to fit inside whatever area is available.

A battery case for the iPhone 4S

b) A replacement battery for your phone. If your phone is old, a new battery should work; if your phone is still quite new, you might be able to find a higher capacity battery than the stock one. These sometimes require you to replace the back cover as well, so ensure that all of your accessories will remain compatible. Generally the gains in battery life will be the smallest here.

c) A battery case for your phone. This is essentially a protective case that you can slip your phone into, which will contain an integrated external battery. This is a nice middle ground, offering you extra battery power without needing constant replacement.

Thanks for reading!

I hope you find these tips useful – if you’ve got your own, why not leave them as a comment?

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for MobileFun.co.uk, the UK’s leading online retailer of the BlackBerry 9900 sim free and the new Kindle cover, the Kindle cover with light.

Samsung's Essential Micro SDHC cards

Today, I am reviewing a Samsung memory card, sent to me by Memory Card Zoo.

Samsung claim its line of Essential Micro SDHC cards are resilient against water and dust. Not only that, but it also says they are safe from shocks, magnetic fields and X-Rays! Memory Card Zoo sent the 8GB model for me to review, which would set you back a mere £10.79 with free delivery.

Well, I don’t have electromagnets or X-Ray machines to hand, but I do have an abundant supply of water. So I gave this memory card a bath in warm water, and found that it kept on working!

Samsung's "Essential" Micro SDHC, Class 6 8GB card with SD adapter

Before the soaking, I put it through a 21 hour continuous write test, via the USB reader shown below. The card sustained an average write speed of just over 4MB/s. This is lower than it should have been, for a class 6 card. The USB reader used for this test was an INOV8 adapter, which fits every memory card format I’ve come across! That was also sent to me from Memory Card Zoo, who sell it for £6.95.

INOV8 Multi-format memory card reader from Memory Card Zoo

I usually find that Micro SDHC cards get too hot to touch during extended write periods. However, this one dissipated its heat quite well, and only became slightly warm to touch during writing.

The memory card submerged in water!

As mentioned above, I dropped the Essential memory card into some warm water and left it there for 10 minutes. I didn’t think there was room for pockets of gas in a Micro SDHC card, but I saw an air bubble escape as it went down. After being careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water, I gave it a quick dry and continued with another write speed test.

It survived the soaking

For the last test, I decided to use the memory card slot in my laptop, using the SD card adapter which Samsung supply. This time, the Samsung Essential Micro SDHC card sustained a write speed of 10MB/s, far better than before. Even more impressive, considering that it had just been submerged in water! Presumably, the memory card slot is connected to the main data bus of my laptop, rather than being an internal USB device.

Write speed test results

We might take such speeds for granted these days, but it’s worth comparing them to the types of memory card we used to use, that are now mostly obsolete.  For example, an Olympus 2GB XD card, which Memory Card Zoo sell for £10.99, can only write at 774KB/s!

XD cards, an old format still in use

Let’s start with a brief history lesson. The two main battery technologies used in smartphones today are Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer. Lithium Ion batteries were originally proposed in the 1970s, and were released commercially in the 1990s. They proved popular in powering the mobile devices that became widely popular in the 1990s, such as laptops, video cameras and mobile phones. This was due to their light, space-efficient and flexible construction and lack of memory effect.

Lithium Polymer batteries are an evolution of the same concept, developed in the mid 1990s. The difference between these similarly named battery technologies is that a Lithium Polymer battery holds its lithium-salt electrolyte in a solid polymer composite, whilst a Lithium Ion battery keeps the electrolyte in an organic solvent.

In practical terms, Lithium Polymer batteries tend to be more reliable, more robust and cheaper to manufacture than Lithium Ion batteries. They can also be formed into almost any shape and tend to be slightly lighter, a definite advantage when designing a complex and dense device such as a smartphone. There are no significant differences in charge capacity, charge time or lifespan.

A LIthium Polymer Battery

Of course, battery technology isn’t standing still – batteries are a large and growing business, as mobile technology continues to proliferate. One interesting new development, published just last week in the Journal of Advanced Materials, solves a long-standing problem.

Silicon had been identified as having the potential to store up to ten times more energy than materials used today, but tends to grow and shrink under charge, quickly breaking down the battery. A new polymer developed at Berkeley prevents this breakdown, allowing their prototype to absorb eight times the charge of Lithium without breaking. It’ll be a while before this technology is prepared, but it’s good to know that the increasing energy costs of bigger screens and faster processors will be matched with more capacious batteries.

With current technology, smartphones tend to last only hours before needing a recharge. The iPhone 4S boasts eight hours of 3G talk time, whilst the Samsung Galaxy S2 lasts eight hours and forty minutes. You can increase this a fair amount by turning off features, such as Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth, when you’re not using them. Turning down your screen’s brightness and automatic syncing also helps, but it comes to a point where you’re rather jeopardising the whole point of having a smartphone in pursuit of extra battery life.

A more sensible idea is to make use of the whole host of mobile phone accessories designed expressly for increasing your phone’s battery life. There are three main categories: chargers, extended batteries, and external batteries.

Using a charger is a fairly simple strategy – instead of increasing your phone’s recharging capabilities, you can just ensure that it remains charged more often. While you normally just get a mains adapter, it’s also possible to get USB car chargers and docks, which keep your phone topped up whilst you’re driving and at your desk, respectively.

An extended battery for a Samsung Galaxy smartphone

Most people do this already though, so let’s move onto extended batteries. These batteries come with a greater capacity than the original battery that came with your phone, granting you longer use of your phone. If your phone consistently dies an hour or two before you get home, then an extended battery can be just the ticket.

Some extended batteries are the same size as your original battery, so it’s just a matter of exchanging them. Other batteries are bigger than the original one, so they typically come with a replacement back cover that fits the new size. This means that other accessories, such as cases or docks won’t fit, so be wary when ordering this type of extended battery. Of course, you do tend to achieve much higher capacities when unconstrained by size, so there’s certainly a trade-off there.

An external battery pack

The final and perhaps most convenient way of extending your battery life is to use an external battery pack. These self-contained batteries are charged at home while you charge your normal phone, and then taken with you when you go out. If your phone is running low on power, just connect the external battery to start recharging it.

As the entire assembly is self-contained, you can achieve much longer battery lives without making your phone bulky – you only need to have it attached when you really need it. The external batteries also can be much bigger and more capacious, providing up to two or three times the battery life of your phone. Battery cases also fall in this category, although you’d typically not remove a battery case as often as an external battery pack.

With a few well chosen accessories, you can achieve a smartphone that stays on all day without sacrificing the bells and whistles that made you buy it in the first place. It’s not a silicon battery, but hey, we’ll take what we can get.

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for MobileFun.co.uk, the UK’s largest online retailer of iPad 2 accessories, including Krusell iPad 2 cases.

Queen’s Gardens Flower Circus Panorama

I'm on Blottr

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I’ve been posting  stories on yet another site, namely Blottr.

In short, Blottr is like the Wikpedia of news, anyone can contribute and edit news stories. It was launched in September 2010 and founded by Adam Baker. Blottr covers local news (UK cities: Bristol, Birmingham, London, Leeds, Edinburgh and Manchester, but it’s soon to be rolled out across key parts of Europe too). It also covers politics, sports, business; and technology, which is where I come in. Blottr recently appointed three new columnists, of which I’m one - you can read about them and Blottr here.

I have a bi-weekly column where I give commentary and insight on the latest technology news, and review the tools that can make your life better. If you head over to my profile page, you can see all my stories and even subscribe to them by email. I’m listing articles on my publications page too.

I’m really interested to see where citizen journalism goes, and I’m excited to be involved. The obvious advantage is that people on the street reporting from a mobile application can break stories that mainstream media either couldn’t or wouldn’t. The obvious question over citizen journalism is quality of information, but I think there are two aspects that compensate for this. If someone reports as an eye-witness, then that information can be taken as fairly accurate. Furthermore, consider  the collaborative aspect of Blottr. Just as with Wikipedia, the ‘knowledge of crowds’ takes over, with public correcting the facts. The more people who participate, the better things will be.

Over to Adam,

Front view: Nexus One, Milestone 2, Nexus S

Last time, I reviewed the Motorola Milestone 2 and published a gallery of close up photos for your viewing pleasure. This time the Milestone 2 is back shown up against some other milestone devices. Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun!

To compare the Milestone 2 in its opened QWERTY mode, I paired it up against the much loved Nokia N900, Nokia’s last Maemo device. It’s easy to call the Milestone 2 chunky, but when you put it up against the N900, you realised that things were a lot fatter just a few years ago.

For portrait touch slab mode, I put the Milestone two up against the two de facto Android reference devices, the Nexus One and Nexus S. The Nexus One and Milestone 2 both have 3.7″ screens, while the Nexus S is the biggest at 4″. You also get to see the difference in the type of screen materials used. Both the Nexus One and Milestone 2 have somewhat silvered backings, while the Nexus S has a real obsidian look going on.

So read on if you want to see the Milestone 2 (literally) stacked up against the Nokia N900, HTC Google Nexus One and the Samsung Nexus S!

The Milestone 2 QWERTY membrane keyboard

Thanks to Steve Litchfield, I recently had a chance to try out the Motorola Milestone 2. This is a slide-out QWERTY Android 2.2 device. I was interested in trying this one because of its physical QWERTY form factor. Most Android devices are rather generic touch slabs these days.

The Milestone 2 has a 3.7″ TFT screen. Compared to the AMOLED equipped Nexus and Nokia smartphones, TFT looks decidedly lifeless these days. Given the technology you’d also expect TFT screens to be more power hungry than their AMOLED cousins. This is because TFT has an always-on backlight, whereas AMOLED display don’t because each pixel makes its own light. However, I would anecdotally say that the Milestone 2′s battery life seemed marginally better than both my Nexus One and Nexus S.

The Milestone 2 has Motorola’s Android custom layer known as Motoblur. In terms of home screen design and widgets, things aren’t too offensive. Motorola actually packaged some useful and good looking widgets to control core features of the phone’s hardware (e.g. WiFi, GPS, etc.). However, the inconvenient side of Motorola’s customisation comes from the requirement to have a Motoblur account before you can even start using the phone. Yes, you have to log in or sign up, because the phone will launch the homescreen. The Motoblur account serves to tie together all of your other social networking accounts (e.g. Twitter and Facebook). However, this just introduces redundancy because the official applications for said social networks don’t check for Motoblur credentials. So your “Accounts” setting pages ends up with two groups of the same logins.

This just leaves the Milestone 2′s unique selling point, its physical QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is made of an all-in-one membrane with raised bumps over the switch for each key. These switches were far too stiff for my liking. Instead of being a fluid typing experience, typing on the Milestone 2 was just hard work. To further break down any fluidity in typing, things like numbers and extra punctuation absolutely require pressing or holding the function key. On other devices, e.g. the Nokia E7, a long press can access extra symbols, rather than using the function key.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed with the Milestone 2. The only plus point was a gigabyte of application storage, which puts the likes of the Nexus One to shame. It’s TFT screen looks outdated next to AMOLED devices. Its poor physical keyboard on the Milestone 2 in no way justifies the added chunkiness that it incurs.

With that said, here’s some photos of the device in the flesh!

My gripes with it is the +1 system, which seems to be a confused mix between the Facebook like button and the Twitter favourite function. I’m still trying to work out exactly the benefit of the +1 one button in terms of interaction on Google Plus. Of course, the +1 button serves to tailor search results for you, based on your social graph. Whether that is a good thing or an evil thing is a debate for another day!

The thing I’m really missing from Google Plus is an easy way to share content with my Plus followers. At the moment, if I want to share a link with my Google Plus circles, I have to go to the site and manually post the link. Instead, I want to have sharing buttons (or at least a browser plugin) to have a one-click share, like we have with Facebook and Twitter.

The only social buttons for Google that are appearing on blogs are the +1 buttons, which do not send content to your Google Plus feed! Of course, the +1 button can’t do this because you have to tell Plus which circles each of your posts are going to. Therein lies the rub.

Still though, if you’d like to try out Google Plus for yourself, I have 150 invites. All you need to do is click this link. If you’ve read this far, a Flattr wouldn’t go amiss either

Ovi's fragile app store

A quick Google search demonstrates that there are a lot of Symbian users out there having problems with their Ovi Store app. The most likely causes can be traced back to testing beta software, that inadvertently interferes with Qt libraries. I’ve already written on All About Symbian about one way to remedy such problems in “When beta testing goes bad”. Once again though, I have just had to repair my Nokia C7 again, after it developed a bug where the Ovi Store would get stuck on the loading screen. Read on to find out how I fixed it.

For reasons that are still unknown to me, the Ovi Store app (v2.08) on my C7, suddenly would not load. It was stuck at the blue and green loading screen, continually playing the spinning icon animation.

Given that it’s been out for around a year, there are plenty of other reviews on the Web. So, I won’t make this an exhaustive review of a device you’ve probably already read about. However, I was fortunate enough to have a two week loan of Tim Salmon’s Dell Streak, see the photos I took of the device along side other smartphones. Therefore, these are just my thoughts about the device, while my memories are still fresh.

The Dell Streak, a 5 inch Android phone, or is it a tablet?

So off we go, here’s my thoughts on Dell’s generously proportioned slate-come-smartphone, running Android 2.2 Froyo …

Phone or tablet?

Even now that I’ve used the Streak for two whole weeks, I’m still undecided if I should call it a large phone or a small tablet. Tim has mused over the same question. If you you had a gun to my head, I’d have to say a it’s a big phone. Why do I say that? First of all, it’s designed to be used as a phone. You can make and receive calls while holding the device to your ear. Unlike, say, the Samsung Galaxy Tab which requires the use of a headset to make calls. My second argument for saying the Dell Streak is primarily a phone is that it can comfortably slip into any average trouser pocket, despite its large body. Sure, if you like to wear skin tight pants, you may have a problem, but it happily slipped into all of my pockets.

Dell Streak in the hand

Having said all that, the Streak has made me think differently about screen size. I used to be something of a masochist when it came to screen sizes. I’m the guy who managed to read several PDF novels, including Dostoevsky’s epic, “The Idiot“, on the tiny two inch screen of the Nokia E51! Since December, I’ve been using the HTC Nexus One as my primary device. Until the 4.3″ HD7 and 5.0″ Dell Streak arrived on my doorstep, the Nexus One had the largest screen I’d used on a phone. It made activities like reading Kindle ebooks a comparative pleasure. It was startling to realise that the Nexus One’s 3.5″ screen felt tiny.

The reason the Nexus One felt so constrained after using the Streak was that the latter can fit so much more on its screen. This means reading anything, whether it be Kindle books, apps like Google Reader, or websites, is easier because it allows for more eye movement and less finger scrolling.

Viewing Twitter on the large 5 inch screen

Both of the Android devices I’ve been talking about here have the same screen resolution, 480×800 pixels. Therefore, one might expect that the Streak would display the same amount of information as the Nexus One, just with larger dimensions. This isn’t the case though. Those larger pixels on the Streak mean that text and icons can be scaled down, to the same physical size as you would see on a three to four inch screen. If elements are scaled down, more can be fitted on the screen at once. One cautionary note, I have good close up vision, but Tim complained about the default system fonts being too small for him to read comfortably. They obviously weren’t scaled up to take advantage of the physical size of the device.

The Hardware

The Streak has a pleasingly simple and sleek appearance. Down the right-hand side you find a 3.5mm headphone socket, the volume rocker, power button and camera shutter key. The camera is an autofocus unit and so the shutter key has two steps.

Dell Streak, right face. Featuring: camera button, power button, volume keys.

The left-hand side is completely clear, apart from the proprietary data port. Yes, I said proprietary, let’s do a collective sigh. Part of the reason for this port is that the Streak has a HDMI dock for hooking up to your home entertainment system. Fortunately though, the Streak will charge via USB connection to this port, it’s just that you have to use that specific cable, you can’t use a standard Micro USB charger.

Dell Streak, left face. Note the proprietary data and charging connector

Both the top and the bottom of the Streak have a tapered end, with smoothly curved, glossy, plastic. I really appreciated this symmetric design and it made holding the device in landscape very comfortable. Often, you don’t need to worry about which way up you’re holding the device. The accelerometer controlled screen orientation is happy to work in any situation. The top end houses the earpiece for phone calls along with an ambient light sensor and a front facing camera for video calls.

The tapered end of the Streak, both ends are an identical shape

The lower end has three capacitive buttons for Home, Menu, and Back. Some people really don’t like having capacitive buttons, I am not one of them! It makes more sense to me to have them along with a capacitive screen. It saves me having to make a mental adjustment about how I’m going to interact with different parts of the device.

Capacitive buttons

The back of the Streak it taken up with the very small 5 megapixel camera unit (with a dual LED flash), along with speaker grill and the large metal battery cover. The battery cover attaches via a set of hooks, which when slid into place reveal the afore mentioned speaker. It can be a little fiddly to get used to taking the cover on and off, because it doesn’t quite feel as if it has pressed home enough to slot into place, when it actually has. Also, the metal plate is covered in a rather brittle black lacquer. Both Tim and I have dropped the cover, and there are chips around the corners to attest to the fact!

Dell Streak rear view, notice the paint chips

On a side note, the battery cover reveals a housing for a 1540mAh battery, SIM card slot, and Micro SDHC card slot.

Dell Streak 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash

The Software

As mentioned, the Dell Streak was running Android 2.2, when I tested it. However, at the time of writing there was over the air update available for version 2.2.2. The only customisation to the user interface was Dell’s “StageUI”. Given that this was the first custom Android user interface I’d reviewed, I did not find it at all obtrusive.

The Streak has seven home screens, many of which can be filled with full screen widgets made by Dell. The most useful of which is a widget which displays a three by three grid of your most recently used applications, along with weather and location (see the ‘in the hand’ photo, above). Other full screen widgets include: a music player which showed an album art gallery of recently added music, and similar widgets for browser bookmarks and contacts.

Dell Studio music gallery widget

The good is that is you don’t like them, you don’t have to use them. Given the scale of on screen items, discussed above, it’s possible to add a lot more app icons to a home screen. However, simple widgets like the traditional single row, full width, Music widget are not scaled up, but still occupy the same relative space as on smaller devices, which means there’s a lot of empty space on the Streak’s home screens. Click here for Tim’s take on the Froyo version of Stage UI.

The only other notable difference between the Dell’s implementation of Froyo to a vanilla Android device is the app-grid. Rather than a vertically scrolling list, the app-grid is made up of sideways scrolling pages. Again, I liked this, but it is a subjective choice.

Overall, the version of Android running on the Streak is very close to a vanilla ‘Google experience’ such as you’d find on the Nexus One. I would count the few customisations as enhancements. They provide optional functions that don’t change the overall user experience you’d find on any ‘Google Experience’ Android device.

Swype is included 'out of the box' with the Dell Streak

There’s one exception to what I’ve just said  (yes, I’m just trying to keep you on your toes!). Dell have bundled the Swype keyboard as the default input method. If you haven’t heard of Swype, it works by the user drawing a line connecting all of the letters that spell out the word they want to type. For example, draw a line from d, to a, to v, to i, to d, to type “David”. I have tried Swype on much smaller screens, and found it to be a poor experience. However, on the Streak’s large screen, where the physical size gives a much more forgiving margin of error, I actually enjoyed doodling out my words. What’s more, the Swype keyboard works just as well as an ordinary QWERTY keyboard in both portrait and landscape. People tend to love or hate Swype, but I have to say that it worked well on the Streak.

Performance

There isn’t actually a lot to say here, which is always the way with something that works well. I’m sure if there was lots of performance issues I’d be making a laundry list of complaints!

The Streak’s 1GHz CPU did justice to everything I ran on the device. I don’t tend to run that many demanding applications. However, Tower Raiders 2 Gold,one of my favourite Android games, is a very good test for any computational bottlenecks. While this game slows down occasionally on the Nexus One, the Dell Streak happily played every level I could get to, without dropping frames when the action became very busy!

Video playback, both with the official YouTube application, and with the third party VPlayer, always played smoothly. Watching video is another thing that the Streak’s five inch screen is obviously well suited to. Relatively speaking, feels like watching a large screen TV. What’s more, the Streak’s speaker is very loud, so hearing audio isn’t a problem either.

However, the single best performance aspect for me was the Streak’s generous internal storage drive. This is a really important aspect for Android devices, as not every application can be installed onto the SD card. Phones like the Nexus One with a mere 200MB of internal storage soon start to feel the pinch. However, the Streak has a whopping 2GB of internal storage, which means that you’ll practically never run out of space for applications.

The other performance aspect is of course battery life. Unfortunately, I cannot reliably report on this. I used the Streak without a SIM card, so there was no GSM or 3G connection to draw power. Plus I had a warning from Tim that if the battery was allowed to become completely exhausted, a factory reset of the device would be necessary. Hence, I was very pro-active about keeping it topped up. What I can report however, is that I never had a nasty surprise at how much the battery had depleted after a heavy session of browsing and game playing.

I did have a curious networking issue though. I often found that the native browser would complain about certain likes, like shortened URL’s having “Too many redirects” and would give up loading the page. This meant that I had to resort to Opera Mobile as the default browser. I queried with Tim about this and said that he’d never had that problem. This leaves me to conclude the the Dell Streak and my Netgear DG834G v5 WiFi router weren’t quite compatible.

Conclusion

Overall, now that I’ve returned the Streak to Tim, I’m missing the big old thing! Whenever I wanted to check my Google Reader feeds, without my laptop, I often found myself reaching for the Streak, rather than my Nexus One. That large screen, in portrait, just made reading text so much more comfortable. The Streak’s form factor has made me think twice about tablet devices. However, I do suspect that even a seven inch device will be a completely different experience to a five inch device.

I wouldn’t recommend the Dell Streak if you have a fast-paced, rough-and-tumble lifestyle. However, if you’re mostly in the office, and/or at home, and use your mobile device for a lot of reading and/or video watching, then it’s worth giving the Streak serious consideration. Especially if you want a larger screen device, without having to have a phone AND a tablet.

Further reading

• Dell Streak – Phone or Tablet?
• Dell Streak Update – FroYo (Android v2.2) and StageUI
• Dell Streak review

Windows Phone 7

Thanks to Steve Litchfield, I’ve been able to test the HTC HD7, one of the earliest Windows Phone 7, erm, phones. I’ve already posted a photo gallery of HD7. Now, I want to talk about Microsoft’s new mobile operating system which will be adopted by Nokia as its primary platform, eventually replacing Symbian.

Read on for my opinions and first impressions of Windows Phone 7, with the “NoDo” 7.07 update

Let’s start with the broad strokes, and get into more detail as we go, to explain my initial comments.

I’ll admit that I went into testing Windows Phone 7 (WP7) with a bias against it. Every so often something will come along in the tech world, with cool visuals that sends everyone into a frenzy. It happened with the iPhone, and it’s happening to an extent with WP7, thank to its Metro user interface (UI). This sort of reaction immediately sets off my alarm bells. As time has gone on, the short comings of the iPhone have justified my reaction. Before any iOS fans jump on me, let me say three words: notifications, homescreens, iTunes. I rest my case. What’s my point? While the iPhone is a fine phone, nothing deserves that sort of fanaticism.

If it’s too good to be true, it usually is

Why did I have a bias against WP7? Well, I have doubts about Microsoft, I see them more as a lumbering giant, rather than a ‘thought leader’. The recent deals with Nokia and Skype, have made me start thinking of the company as a guy during a midlife crisis, gatecrashing all the teenage birthday parties. Beyond my perception of them, using their software made me hate using a computer. I’ve been ‘clean’ of Microsoft software for a couple of years now, and it has been a wonderful experience.

HD7 in the hand

Having said all that, I was adamant that I wanted to give WP7 an objective appraisal. In doing so, I’d either dispel or justify my bias. I have used WP7 on and off for two weeks, and I will continue to test it. So far though, my overall impression is that it is barely more than a feature phone platform. It fails to meet my minimum requirements for a useful smart phone platform. As I’ll discuss below, there are fixes planned for many of my complaints (see here and here), but there are some fundamental issues with Metro UI which I think will prove divisive over time.

Now that I’ve polarised my dear readers, let’s pick apart my statements.

The key features of Metro UI has to be its Start Menu and People hub…

The WP7 Home Screen

The homescreen is made up of two screens, switched via swiping gestures. The first is the Start Menu, and can be thought of as a list of favourite applications, which are presented as square or rectangular tiles. The second screen is a list of all applications. Long pressing any application allows you to uninstall or pin to the Start Menu.

Good, we have a very simple home screen system. The tile approach is certainly distinctive, and as developers get better access to “live tile” functionality, as the “Mango” updates arrive, tiles will function more like widgets than mere icons. Well done Microsoft.

Windows Phone 7 start menu

I don’t dislike the tiled style of WP7′s Start Menu, However, what the home screen boils down to is a simple list of applications, accompanied by a favourites list, i.e. the Start Menu. For sure, this is a step up from iOS which lacks any sort of home screen. However, when you compare WP7 to the flexibility of both Symbian and Android, WP7 looks functionally deficient. Both Symbian and Android have multiple home screens and each with their own way of implementing folders.

Windows Phone 7's application list

Of course, some people will prefer the simplicity of Metro UI, but this is a subjective choice, with no rights or wrongs. However, despite the comparative complexity Symbian and Android, their everyday use doesn’t have to be complicated. At least they offer the potential to expand and adapt to how the user wants to access their apps and data. As it stands, WP7 is limited to just one list of tiles, whether more are needed or not.

The People Hub

The People Hub aims to unify your contacts with your social network into one universal overview of what’s going on in your social circle. So far, Windows Live and Facebook are the only supported social networks. Twitter should be included with the Mango update. There are three lists in the People Hub which you swipe to move between.

Windows Phone 7 contact list

The first is the basic contact list. Headings for each letter of the alphabet are highlighted, and tapping any of them brings up the full alphabet to select from, as an alternative to scrolling all the way though. I liked this, and I was quite impressed at how intelligently WP7 linked contacts it found in both my Google contacts and my Facebook friends. It wasn’t 100% effective, for example it failed to match Andy S*** with Andrew S*** as the same person. Fortunately, it’s an easy procedure to manually link contacts.

"What's new" shows status updates from contacts in the People Hub.

The second list, “What’s new”, is the status updates view. This shows the latest status updates, photos, and links, posted by your Facebook friends. I can see this having mass appeal, so again, good for Microsoft. I could take it or leave it, as I often find there is so much asinine rubbish posted to Facebook, there are only a select few people I allow onto my news feed. I know that’s harsh, but I only have so much personal bandwidth! While Microsoft have addressed their insane omission of Twitter, I want to see more social networks included. The People Hub hooks into the WP7 Pictures application, allowing you to browse the latest photos posted by your friends. In this case, why on earth were popular photo sharing services like Flickr, Picasa, and Microsoft’s own offerings, not supported out of the gate? Fortunately, there is an official Flickr application in the Market, but this means that functionality is being replicated.

The final view in the People Hub is a set of tiles showing the most recent contacts you’ve looked at.

Metro UI

The most notable style accent with Metro UI is the oversized headings. Look at any screen shot of WP7 and you’ll see headings that are so large they are clipped at the side of then screen. Many people have told me they like this. I can see the appeal, you get a large clean font to present each heading. It doesn’t matter that it’s being clipped, because the context makes it obvious. Or does it? As you use the OS more, you find that other exceptionally long headings, such as applications in the Market, are being clipped. To me this is wrong, because application names are NOT obvious. Therefore, by clipping non-obvious text WP7 is obfuscating required data.

Metro UI headings at their worst

I’ve complained about this on Twitter, and in reply it was pointed out to me that I all I needed to do was drag the screen to the left a little. Well, first of all, I shouldn’t have to drag across the screen to read a heading. Secondly, this sideways dragging behaviour is inconsistent. Sometimes it will work as expected, but other times it will spring into the neighbouring view. In short, it’s a mess. I realise that the font size is a subjective issue, and some people will like it. To me however, it looks very silly.

I appreciate the minimalist style that Microsoft have aimed for with WP7, and I’m glad of it, to a point. However, WP7 looks more unfinished than minimalist. Combine this with the fact that kinetic scrolling in third party applications is noticeably jerky; the whole platform looks and feels like an early beta version, not something that people should be paying good money for! Fortunately, the kinetic scrolling issue is one of several performance improvements promised for the WP7 Mango update.

Performance

Mango has been promised the mobile version of Internet Explorer 9, which will be “dramatically faster”. This is just as well, as I did some cursory tests; comparing the load times of this blog across the Symbian Web browser on the Nokia C7, the native browser of Android on the Nexus One, and Opera Mobile on the Dell Streak, against IE on Wp7. Long story short, WP7 came last at loading the desktop version of this site.

I have to say though that I’ve enjoyed the e-mail experience on WP7, there’s something about that which seems to work well. Particularly tapping the left of a message to select multiple items is nice. However, the oversized headings come into play again, cropping anything longer than an average firstname & lastname.

Some third party apps like Twitter and Seesmic seem very slow to update, slower than their counterparts on Android. Again, it’s hoped this will be fixed in Mango.

Having used the stock keyboard in Android Gingerbread (on the Nexus One), I can report that the WP7 keyboard is functionally identical. The only thing that makes the WP7 keyboard more usable, is that the HD7 comes with a large 4.3″ screen.

Support for landscape mode is patchy too. Email and Calendar rotates, Calculator even rotates into a scientific calculator layout. However, the premier applications, People Hub and Pictures do not rotate, neither does the Start Menu. This is especially unfortunate for a device like the HD7, which comes with a kickstand for landscape use. There’s no word on portrait/landscape modes in Mango.

The Windows Phone 7 homescreen lacks rotation

Another pain with WP7 is file access. Memory cards can’t be replaced without resetting the phone, so there’s no way to transfer files via memory card. The device doesn’t even appear as a USB drive when connected to a computer. The only way to get content on and off a WP7 device, is by going through the Zune Desktop software, which is horribly bloated, as per standard from Microsoft. There’s no excuse for not having a USB mass storage mode in 2011 device. Yes, I’m looking at you too, Apple.

Of course, saving the ‘best’ till last brings us to multitasking. It’s been made clear that multitasking will arrive in Mango, quite what form of multitasking isn’t certain. That is, true multitasking as found in Symbian, or faux-multitasking as found in iOS. As of NoDo, there’s no multitasking and it’s crippling for everyday use. Whether you’re switching between applications, or returning to an application after the screen powered off, any temporary state is lost, highly annoying.

This final point brings me back to my early criticism of Microsoft. A company turning out a smart phone operating system in 2011 without multitasking does not inspire confidence.

I have been quite scathing here, but I can only make this my interim judgement. Windows Phone 8 is coming next year, and we have yet to see how much of a repair job  Nokia can do when they start producing Windows Phone phones. Ah yes, naming … again with the confidence in Microsoft line. I’d like to chastise whoever came up with the name “Windows Phone” for making us all have to say ‘phone’ twice in a sentence.

Many thanks to Steve Litchfield for providing WP7 screen shots.

The Streak is an Android device, and it’s honestly a matter of opinion as to whether it should be classed as a large phone or a small tablet. It’s a fully functioning Android phone, but its five inch screen makes it difficult to describe as “pocket sized”.

The differentiators of the Streak, apart from its screen size come in the form of Dell’s “Stage UI”, which I didn’t find too offensive in comparison to the pure Google experience offered on the HTC Nexus One. The other unique(ish) selling point is inclusion of the Swype virutal keyboard. I’ve tried Swype on Symbian, where I was quite underwhelmed. However, there’s something about doodling lines to type words on such a large screen that is actually an enjoyable experience.

Thanks to Tim Salmon for the loan of this one.

The Dell Streak, a 5 inch Android phone, or is it a tablet?

In the meantime though, I wanted to give some attention to the hardware. HTC have come out with what is a somewhat conservative or ‘safe’ design. The HD7 is a fairly nondescript touch slab. There are some things to get excited about though. First of all, the brushed metal bezzle surrounding the camera, LED flash lights and speaker, doubles as a spring-loaded kick stand. I love this feature, and the angle it stands the phone at is ideal. I wish more phones had a kick stand. The kick stand is a perfect complement to the large and bright 4.3″ LCD screen.

There’ll be more on the HD7 here soon, but for now, just sit back and enjoy the the photo gallery!

The HTC HD7

It's ME/CFS Awareness Day!

May is the official awareness month for Myalgic Encephalopathy and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), and May 12th (today) is the international awareness day. ME/CFS is a debilitating condition that I have suffered with since 2002. I don’t make any secret of my condition, but I don’t spend much time writing on the subject either. Therefore, it seems like a good time to join in with my fellow sufferers and tell you all about it. As well as describing what it feels like, I will also tell you how both the government and the media have made sufferers feel like malingerers.

Without further ado, here is my ME/CFS story …

What is ME/CFS?

There are several acronyms which refer to the same general condition:  Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), and Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome (PVFS). Technically, I and many others can be classed as having PVFS, but most of us avoid using such a relatively unknown term. This range of names highlights how little knowledge there is about this condition. It’s my suspicion that there are many similar conditions, thus we get this group of  umbrella terms. There is still debate over how to refer to ourselves. For the purposes of this post, I’ll stick with “ME/CFS”.

ME/CFS is a debilitating condition where sufferers experience any combination of the following symptoms:

• Persistent ‘crushing’ fatigue
• Little or no physical stamina
• Neurological pain
• Muscular pain
• Twitching muscles
• Poor concentration
• Poor short term memory
• Impaired balance
• Low quality of sleep
• Poor temperature control
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Each ME/CFS sufferer you speak to will experience a different combination of symptoms, and have differing severities of each. However, the characteristic feature that links them all is the ‘pay back’ after any period of activity. Some of us can feel ‘okay’ while we’re doing something, but the severe debilitating symptoms will arise after we’ve been active for a while. This is why one the most widely recommended coping strategies for us is ‘Pacing’. The idea is to try to find an equilibrium of rest and activity, avoiding the ‘boom and bust’ pattern that leave many of us bed ridden. Some say that the amount of activity should be slowly stepped up to aid recovery, also known as Graded Exercise Therapy (GET). However, I have yet to hear of a significant number of people actually recovering by using GET – it is clearly not a magic bullet. Even with pacing, the condition is unpredictable, which means trying to hold down a regular nine to five job is difficult.

Video Interlude

How I became ill

In 2002, I was nearing the end of the first year of a PhD course. It was a position I was excited, and stressed, to be in. As well as doing academic research under the guidance of academics I admired and respected, I was taking on as much teaching work as I could to top up my income. My weekly routine consisted of rushing around, giving maths tutorials to undergraduate students, and marking their homework. In addition to that, I was doing outreach work with two local schools, giving advanced maths classes. If I was lucky, I had a day or so in my week to concentrate on learning the material I needed to know, for the research I’d be doing the following year. It was a gruelling routine, but I loved it.

In May 2002, I fell ill with a virus. Nothing extraordinary, just a snuffly nose and a cough, but I didn’t recover. As my fatigue worsened, I had to give up my teaching duties, and start doing my PhD work from home. Doing a PhD in any subject requires a lot of concentration and focus. As time went on, my ability to do just that was getting worse, and I couldn’t think clearly enough to carry on with my work. Meanwhile, I saw my GP a few times, but all he could find wrong with me was a vitamin B12 shortage. This was corrected by injections, but my condition didn’t improve. Therefore, I had to intercalate from my PhD, year after year.

ME on a bad day

My GP tried to attribute my persistent symptoms to depression, as many doctors do with ME/CFS. This is a subtlety that many doctors seem to miss. Of course people with ME/CFS are depressed, it’s a demoralising state to be in. Most of the time though, sufferers weren’t depressed before they got ill. In most cases, any depression is actually a symptom, rather than the cause.

The transition of stepping down from what I’d aspired to do since I was a school boy was difficult. My routine was gone,  I was stuck at home everyday without  a social life, and I had to claim benefits. However, the crushing fatigue, and deep-rooted, persistent pain in my muscles, made looking after myself a rather big distraction! As with any chronic condition, you have to work at getting through a day at a time.

Video interlude

The people who make living with ME/CFS worse

Unfortunately, actions by sceptical doctors, uncaring government departments, and sensationalist journalists, can have a massively detrimental effect on what is already a physically, and emotionally, devastating condition.

Doctors

Once it became clear I couldn’t return to university, I had to ask my GP for sick notes. He refused, telling me that I was a “clever guy” and that I could “work out why” he wasn’t giving me sick notes. My interpretation of this is that he didn’t believe there was anything wrong with me, and thought I was trying to commit fraud. I fought my corner, and by going through my local patient liaison service, he was forced to issue me with sick notes. Later on, a new surgery opened in my area. I left my old GP, and I’ve been much happier with the Primary Care Trust (PCT) practice I’m now with. Dear Mr. Cameron, please don’t screw up the PCT, it actually works.

Finally, I got to see an immunologist at a private clinic (BUPA), after some friends suggested I might have ME/CFS. Sure enough, the consultant confirmed I was a text book case and referred me to his NHS clinic. After being passed around several more consultants, it soon became clear there was no medical help for my condition. The only available ‘therapy’ was to go on a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). During my first session, the therapist was at great pains to emphasise that CBT was not counselling, so I consented to embark on a full course, as I was open to anything that might help me. In short though, the course made no difference to me, and it WAS counselling, just by another name.

The problem is that many in the medical profession treat ME/CFS as a psychological condition, when in actual fact it is a biomedical condition, and therefore psychological treatment is inappropriate. In my case, the only effect of CBT was to cause me even more fatigue by travelling to and from the sessions. In many other cases, patients are given exercises to do, which cause a great deal more harm than good, as described in these studies.

The government

Applying for financial aid has been a consistently demoralising experience. I shall remain politically neutral by saying that both New Labour, and the Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition, have been clueless at how to help sick and disabled people. Sick and disabled people need help, encouragement, straight forward and fair rules, and a sense of self-worth. However, the exact opposite is achieved by the UK incapacity system, and its proposed reforms.

Benefit claim forms have questions about what you are mechanically capable of doing, along with a SHORT section where you can talk about  your mental health. Nowhere in any of these extensive questions are there questions about one’s ability to maintain a certain level of activity. Certainly, someone with moderate ME/CFS can lift a bag of shopping, or get up from a chair without help. However, there’s no where to formally state that once you’ve carried a few heavy bags of shopping back home, that you’ll be recovering for several days afterwards!

Benefit claims are regularly reviewed, claimants have to attend a medical interview, and complete a renewal form. The UK Department of Works and Pensions employs a company called ATOS to conduct medical interviews. Read this distressing post on the “Where’s the Benefit?” blog about the treatment benefit claimants can expect from an ATOS interview.

In my own experience, prior to ATOS, I received poor service from my local interview centre. At my second review, I was assessed by a Chinese doctor, who could barely speak English. In short, I failed the interview. I appealed against the decision, and as part of the process, I received copies of the reports written about me. I was shocked to see how my answers had been taken out of context at every opportunity.

The mood at the tribunal was intriguing; there was almost a sense of knowing, both from my welfare rights representative, and the appeals board. It suggested to me that the appeals board were seeing a great many cases where people should not have been considered capable of work. They certainly didn’t take long to decide I wasn’t, and so I won the appeal.

Indeed, the more the government makes the work capability assessment (WCA) into a blunt, insensitive tool, the more people will have to justly appeal, and win. In turn, that process causes claimants a great deal of upset and stress, and costs the tax payer even more money.

Once you are in receipt of benefits, the rules make it somewhat impossible to get back into work. As things stand, people who are on Incapacity Benefit (IB), Income Support (IS), or Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), are allowed to do 16 hours of work a week, and can keep a mere £20 of anything they earn. Anything declared beyond £20 is deducted from the benefit for that week. What’s more, once you announce you are trying to work, it will trigger a summons for you to take part in ‘back to work’ interviews. These conditions provide a disincentive to anyone who wants to try getting back into work. Most of the time, for people who are tired and find it difficult to concentrate, just the paper work involved isn’t worth the £20.

For people who are too poorly to leave their house, the idea of being sent on courses is just overwhelming, and ironically unhelpful. In my view, the system is far too inflexible to help sick and disabled people do any work, nor do the above conditions reflect reality. When someone who is sick or disabled tries working, they don’t know how they will be able to cope. There is no reason for the DWP to assume it’s okay to immediately cut them off. What’s more, the idea of losing one’s security by simply TRYING to work, is enough to scare them away from doing so. The reforms I’d like to see to the UK system would have the DWP taking a personal approach by actually listening to the needs of individuals.

The media

Via an all to keen media machine, the government regularly misrepresents the sick and disabled. The public are presented with a stereotype that everyone who is in receipt of benefits is some sort of fraudster. Figures presented in the media focus on how much money is lost due to “fraud and error”, with the emphasis firmly placed on the fraud part of the equation. In actual fact, benefit fraud only accounts for 0.8% of the total welfare bill (see the link below), while  official error accounts 1.8%. However, the story you never see in the news, is how much the DWP under pays the sick and disabled, by error.

For an fantastically detailed  and well researched article on the real cost of benefit fraud and error, please read What Has Happened to Welfare?

Below, are a two illuminating charts from that post, showing the real proportion of the cost of benefits and fraud to the tax payer.

Comparative cost of welfare

Fraud Within the Public Sector

Furthermore, sensationalist newspapers take great joy in frequently reporting about the benefit cheats who have been caught out. We can all agree that the proverbial window cleaner shouldn’t be claiming for a bad back. Then again, how many windows can that window cleaner clean at once? However, the repeated ranting in newspapers about “Welfare Britain” doesn’t help anyone (apart from those selling the papers). Claiming that the sick and disabled are somehow sucking the country dry doesn’t reflect reality. The end result is that newspapers inflame public opinion and make the already vulnerable sick and disabled people of the country feel worthless. Making someone feel worthless is not a good way to get them back into some degree of employment. For those who aren’t capable of doing any work, such a public mood could lead them to feeling suicidal.

Sadly, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the government and the media, just make the lives of ME/CFS sufferers worse. The NHS means well, but has nothing meaningful to offer. ME/CFS is thought to affect around 250,000 people in the UK, and there is an astoundingly little amount of money spent on medical research into ME/CFS. Therefore, I would be very grateful if you wrote to your MP, and asked for them to raise the subject in parliament.

Please help to spread the word about the plight of ME/CFS sufferers!

The people who make ME better

Fortunately though, I’d just like to give thanks to the people around me, who know me, and know I’m not a “feckless scrounger” just because I’m too fatigued to go out to work nine to five. My friends and loved ones have all been accepting of my condition, and have done their best to understand. Simple understanding, and just keeping in touch with an ME/CFS sufferer goes a very long way. If someone can’t get out of the house to see you, it means a lot for you to just keep in touch and say ‘Hi’ once in a while.

The Internet and social networks have are fantastic ways for ME/CFS sufferers to reach out and find each other. Particularly searching Twitter for the following hashtags will yield hundreds of fellow sufferers: #MECFS, #CFS, #ME, #Fibro.

Useful links

• The ME Association
• The ME Association Facebook Page
• Action for ME
• Action for ME Facebook Page
• ME Research
• ME/CFS Parents
• SupportME
• Sleepy Dust

For even more ME/CFS resources, see this list compiled by the wonderful Marja Ernst.

Looking for tips and donations

If you regularly visit this blog you’ll know that I’ve been changing a few things lately. The changes concern trying to generate a little bit of income from my blog, which I’ve always kept as a non-commercial site for a very long time.

You may also know that I suffer from a debilitating condition called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which puts huge limits on how I can support myself. It’s a poor name to discribe what the condition is really like. I recently read, calling it “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” is like calling Emphysema “Chronic Coughing Syndrome”.

Therefore, I’m getting creative, and working out how I can better support myself. One way to do that is to utilise this blog. If you click the ‘Share this post’ link for any post you see on the front page of the blog, you are taken to the bottom of the post, where you will see various ways to donate to me, and to share my post with others.

There are two donation links on each post. There’s the familiar PayPal donation link, but also I’m looking to the future and have included a Flattr button. There’s a Flattr button at the top right of the blog too, if you just want to tip the blog in general. Flattr is a micro payment system, where you pay in a certain amount of money. However many people you Flattr in a month get an equal share of your monthly ‘means’.

Note: You can subscribe to me on Flattr, by clicking the Flattr button twice.

As an alternative way of donating, you can use the link to my Amazon WishList, listed with the social media links at the top of the blog. If you order something from there, you’re saving me money on things I want to buy sometime.

If you can’t spare a donation  - no problem! If you like what I’ve written, then all I ask is that you use the sharing links to tell your friends and followers about the post. I’m currently supporting Twitter, Facebook (Share and Like), LinkedIn, and Google Buzz. I’m also supporting a service called Buffer, which is a tweet scheduling service. By clicking the Buffer link, the post will be added to your buffer, to be tweeted later, according to your schedule.

Finally, yes, you’ll see I’ve added adverts to the blog. They’re currently Google Ads, but I’m open to offers of affiliate advertising, contact me to discuss rates.

The dual Nexus One charging stand

Today’s review comes courtesy of the kind folks at Mobile Fun, who have sent me a dual charging cradle for my Google Nexus One to test out.

Ever since I began using Android, my constant complaint has been poor battery life. The Nexus One I’m currently using came with the Froyo firmware, which didn’t have great battery life, but things have been even worse since I updated to Gingerbread.

One answer to the problem is a second battery. However, that isn’t much use if you can only charge while it’s in the phone! Therefore, I was keen to try out an independent charger.

Read my review, and see whether this is the accessory for you!

Recently, I’d started re-purposing my mobile phone camera tripod, as a landscape cradle for holding my Nexus One while it was charging. So, I began to appreciate having it upright, beside my laptop, acting as a second screen for checking the time, and messaging. However, while this was an efficient solution from the perspective of using my tripod more, it didn’t help me charge my spare battery. Therefore, a desk stand that would also charge the spare battery seemed like the next logical step. So, off went my review request to Mobile Fun.

While reading the product description, I had overlooked that the cradle came with a USB mains adapter. So, I was rather surprised at the size of the package that arrived!

Click the thumbnails for full resolution photos!

The dual charging cradle packaging

The packaging was the usual armour-like sharp plastic that needed carefully cutting open. Inside the packaging, I found the charging cradle, along with a Mini USB cable (approx 50cm), and a mini USB mains adapter. Given that the standard current rating for any USB port is 0.5 Amps, I was pleased that the mains adapter was rated at 1.5 Amps, which meant that both batteries could theoretically be charged  50% faster than they’d be if they were plugged into a computer port.

Contents: The charging cradle, the mains adapter, and the USB cable

The reason I was surprised at the inclusion of a mains adapter was because I had assumed that the cradle was meant to be used with the Nexus One’s own mains adapter. This is not the case however, because while the Nexus One connects to the world via a Micro USB socket, the desk stand uses a Mini USB socket. That means using this to charge your Nexus One makes your existing mains adapter redundant, which I think is quite wasteful. Not to mention that Micro USB is now the standard connection for mobile devices.

The charging cradle uses Mini USB, rather than Micro USB

The reason they provide a USB cable too, is that you can use the cradle for data connectivity, in addition to charging. However, unlike the leaflet in the box states, the cradle does not have two ports, only one. So, if you do plug this into your PC, you will be limited to the 0.5 Amp charging current of a single port. This means that topping up both your phone and the spare battery will be quite slow. While using the cradle, I haven’t charged from my laptop (but I did test data connectivity), and I didn’t use the supplied mains adapter. Instead, I used my own (shorter) USB cable to connect to my 2 Amp USB mains adapter, which worked fine, and shows there’s no proprietary tampering with standards.

Loading the spare battery into the charging cradle

The cradle itself is quite simple. There are two LED’s; a blue LED indicates that power is connected; and another LED switches from red to green, indicating when the spare battery is fully charged. The receptacle for the Nexus One is a contoured trough, matching the curves of the phone, with an angled Micro USB connector in the centre. The battery slot perfectly fits the Nexus One battery, so that it sits flush to the rest of the cradle. There is a flexible plastic tab that sits beneath the battery and sticks up at the back. Pulling the tab levers the battery up and out of its slot. It’s a low-tech solution that works pretty well. There’s just enough play to lift it up, without catapulting the battery!

Close up, the Nexus One dual charging cradle

The underside of the cradle is featureless, apart from five rubber feet which make sure it stays in place while you’re tapping on the Nexus One’s screen.

The cradle's under side

Another misconception I’d had about this cradle was that I envisioned something I could just drop the phone into and have it charge. However, I was forgetting that Micro USB sockets require a certain degree of force to engage and disengage. When I first tried connecting my Nexus One, I carelessly put it straight down into the slot, misaligning the connector. scratching a bit of paint off its bottom! You quickly learn how to align the phone in the slot, and then it requires a firm ‘clunk’ to make a connection. Correspondingly, it’s quite a challenge to remove the phone from the charging slot with one hand. It’s best to hold the cradle with one hand and pull the phone away with your other hand.

Removing the Nexus One from its charging slot

At first, I was disappointed about this, as I had been thinking of the zero-force charging stand of my landline phone when I asked to review this cradle. However, the benefit of such a firm connection is that you don’t have to be particularly gentle when you tap the screen, while the phone is docked. That means you have a desktop PDA ready and waiting for your greasy fingers to poke and prod at it all day long!

The charging cradle loaded with Nexus One and spare battery

As a “desktop PDA”, the Nexus One works well in this stand, it’s angled back just enough to make for comfortable viewing. In fact, I had a nice feeling of ‘this looks good!‘ while watching it docked in its stand. As far as data connectivity goes, I think the lack of two ports, for charging and data, will be a disadvantage for some. It wasn’t an issue for me however, because the Android market place has plenty of applications to allow remote access into your phone. Therefore, any file transfers I need to do are usually performed over my WiFi network with one of the FTP server applications available for Android. For me, this charging stand is all about the power supply, which is another reason I opted to use my own 2 Amp charger, rather than the charger supplied.

Here’s some more pictures of the cradle ‘in action’:

Comfortable viewing angle on the Nexus One, while working at a desk

Side view, the Nexus One is sloped back

Summary

When trying to sum up my thoughts about this charging cradle, I don’t so much have criticisms, as much as I had different ideas about what it would be. The main problem for people setting up their home or office desk, is that you effectively have to choose between data or charging. Of course, you can charge from a PC connection, but remember that you could be charging two batteries from one USB supply.

Being able to have the phone docked upright on my table has been great, it’s almost been like having a second screen to work with. The biggest advantage of this, though, is having the freedom to keep swapping batteries as the Nexus One continually gorges itself on battery power.

This Nexus One dual charging cradle is currently available at Mobile Fun for just £7.14, which isn’t terribly expensive. Personally, I’d like to see it sans-charger for under a fiver – but it’s still reasonable.

Links

• Mobile Fun
• HTC Google Nexus One Dual Charging Cradle
• Mobile Fun Nexus One Accessories

Buffer, a new way to schedule tweets

Allow me to introduce you to Leo Widrich, co-founder of a new cloud service, called Buffer. It’s a Twitter scheduling service that I’ve been making much use of lately. You’ll also notice that I’m sporting a Buffer button at the bottom of each post. The idea is that using services such as Twitterfeed or Feedly can inadvertently cause you to flood your followers with more tweets than they can keep up with. This can in turn can annoy your followers, and maybe cause them to unfollow you.

Therefore, for non-time sensitive links, using a scheduler allows you to get all of your content out at a steady rate, without overwhelming your followers in the process.

Introduction over, I’ll hand over to Leo now, so he can explain to you about the service in his own words!

Introducing Buffer – Tweet often without flooding your Followers

I found that tweeting consistently and sustainably can sometimes be a big hassle. One reason is that, whilst I am reading lots of great blogposts every day, hitting the tweet button on every post is not quite appreciated by my followers. It floods them with a lot of information in a very short space of time. On the other hand, you also can’’t spend hours and hours on Twitter every day spacing out those tweets so your followers can catch up. Using Buffer has solved the above problem very conveniently for me. I can tweet often, yet without overwhelming my followers with all these tweets at once.

How does Buffer work?

Buffer’’s functionality is super simple: Put as many tweets as you want in your Buffer and the app schedules them for you and posts them throughout the day. That’s it.

What makes it a must have?

What really differentiates Buffer to other tweet scheduling services is that you don’’t have to fiddle with scheduling each tweet individually. Additionally it comes with Browser extensions that allow you to add a tweet from any page you are reading. Click the Buffer icon and here is what happens with David’’s recent post for example:

Add Tweet to Buffer from anywhere

Works inside Google Reader too

After David, the landlord of this post, showed us in a great tutorial how it could be very useful to use Buffer inside Google Reader too, we followed his great advice. Simply hit the browser extension, even when you are reading a post inside Google Reader:

Works inside Google Reader too

Buffer Button for blogs

As a very recent development you can also install your own Buffer Button on blogs, so buffering is even faster. For an example of how this looks like, you can see it at the bottom of this post as David is an early tester with his blog. Here is the code if you are interested:

Timing

The times for when your tweets go out are set to Twitter Peak times by default. Of course you can always make your way to your home account at www.bufferapp.com and adjust the times. Add more or delete some, or simply change them to your needs.

Wrap Up

Making use of Buffer saves me a ton of time every day. I can add lots of tweets into my Buffer and yet I will never flood my followers with my updates. Another thing that comes in very handy is that Buffer offers you analytics for your Buffered tweets which means you get Clicks, Retweets and Reach of your tweets. You can check it out here.

What is your take on this new Twitter App? Do you think it can help you too? Let me know below.

If you’d like to sign up, use David’s affiliate link

The Nokia E7

I’ve been very fortunate to review the Nokia E7 recently for All About Symbian (see my parts of the AAS mega review here and here). My job was to review specific aspects of the software suite, not the hardware. However, before I sent it back to Steve Litchfield, I decided to grab some photos of the device. There are photos of the device by itself, and with other devices I have here at Gilson Towers.

So, if you’re curious about this next-generation Nokia Communicator, then read on to look through my photo gallery below. I’ll be posting these to Flickr in time, but the first exclusive look is here on my blog