Bograma
Mobile gadgets running Blackberry & Android OS'
How To: Check Your Internet Speed on Your Android Phone
0803 days
Out of curiosity last night I wanted to see what’s the difference in speed between my Wi-Fi fiber cable connection I have at home and my GSM provider – a new provider with its new 3G data solution.
The program used on my Android Pulse is the new SpeedTest.com‘s Android application so many people are so fond of. I have to admit there is no point in checking my Internet speed unless it’s not performing up to the tasks at hand: streaming radio or video, reading web pages or downloading podcasts. I am not a speed freak and I don’t usually stream. But I just got BeyondPod to satisfy my “podcatching” needs, but that’s another story!
As you can imagine, the pictures 2 and 3 represent the 3G network speed, the others are the results of Wi-Fi tests. Yeah, we’re still a long way to go. Or the provider is. The program is self-explanatory, has only for tabs and you only have to fine-tune it in order to get your result quickly. The test takes around 10-15 seconds and I reckon the download packets are no more than a few hundred kbps. You can also chose which server to use in order to have an accurate test.
You can get the application in the Market using the Barcode Scanner.
How To: Back-Up Your Data From Your Blackberry
1811 days
Most of the BlackBerry users are not your “average Joe” when it comes to using a phone. A smartphone. Thus it’s important to recognize and fulfill the need of these users of backing-up data. I’ve seen many people complaining about loss of data when their phones died or got stolen or fell into the tub (yeah, we take our BlackBerrys with us almost all the time!).
This issue has been addressed by many, including R.I.M. I won’t go into detail too much when it comes to Desktop Manager. Everybody employing a BlackBerry knows it. It can stay like this for a long time when you open it, finally connect, back-up everything by going to Backup and Restore/Backup/Options or by going to Backup and Restore/Advanced for a selective backup.
The disadvantage is that you can’t just put your messages or calendar entries back without overriding all your system (apps, settings), when sometimes you just want to restore some messages. Another issue I ran into was coming from a Bold 9000 (1GB internal memory) to Bold 9700 (256 MB internal memory): I couldn’t restore anything previously backed up because the internal memory was too small.
I backup every couple of months but as a last resort.
Another program good at backing-up is Best Buy’s m:iQ Live. Available for all kinds of smartphones, it will backup most of your usual stuff: images, videos, contacts, calendar entries, messages and call logs. You can share them, access them on the web and restore all when you’re in trouble or you have a new phone. Multi-platform is a great advantage as you’re not tied to a particular OS and you can switch. You install the application especially designed for BlackBerry on the phone and backup in minutes. It doesn’t have to be automatic and it doesn’t have to run constantly in the background. It can be used from time to time when necessary. It also has a neat “status update” feature, so others can see it when visiting your section.
There here comes good – ole Google with Google Sync. It’s a broader solution, as it includes all kinds on syncs including contacts by Gmail, calendar entries by Google Calendar, news by Google Reader, pictures by Picasa, videos by YouTube and tasks by Google Tasks. Of course, not all are available for BlackBerry through a dedicated client but contacts and calendar entries are more than enough for me. Both contacts and calendar entries will be auto synchronized every three hours, unless you chose to do it manually (at least for the contacts). I keep the calendar entries on automatic sync because I use it a lot (and modify data a lot), while the contacts are synced once at the beginning. In time, I could try another sync every few months especially because Gmail has a tool of finding and merging the duplicates, thus allowing me to keep the hundreds of names under control. The application itself is self-explanatory, tiny, can be installed Over The Air (OTA) and works automatically.
Of course there are other backup solutions but these are the ones I use and never had an issue with. This combo-solution is the perfect opportunity to backup and keep it simple. And not pay extra for it, of course.
Twitter application by R.I.M – a follow-up
0827 days
As of Thursday, I used the new Twitter application by R.I.M. For 2 days I had the occasion of using every bit of it and make an idea regarding this early version.
Let’s not forget that since being announced by the early adopters lucky enough to be provided with a copy ( by R.I.M, by Crackberry and other sites/developers hand-picked by R.I.M) lots and lots of tweets and blog articles have popped-up over the Internet driving the people in search of a leak which appeared promptly. Of course, you can never tell if this was done on purpose by R.I.M in order to get as much feedback as possible, or that the BlackBerry community is really, really powerful and we’re benefiting from that.
I downloaded this leak and except for the fact that it will expire on March 31st, it’s THE Beta used by everyone. So, what are the PROs and CONs of THIS build ( it’s important to highlight this as many, many users are disappointed and complaining about quality, U.I, bugs, lags, etc):
PROS:
- its very existence; R.I.M is committed to offer best quality applications to their customers and is not relying solely on its developers.
- the application is built in order to offer as much functionality as possible, that’s why at this moment it does seem a bit overloaded with features
- the notification system is great, allowing one to close the application once it’s done with it. You can launch it, read the tweets by going to your time-line, replies, DMs, profile & search functions and then close it down. It will notify you with a little “t” in the notification bar on the home-screen and integrate the messages in the BlackBerry Messages Application.
- upon opening the DMs, they will be marked with a little check, so you won’t have to comeback to them again.
- the ability to send links from the BlackBerry browser to Twitter in one click AND the fact that this function is integrated with the browser menu options.
- upon choosing automatic refresh, when in foreground the application won’t just unload the new tweets into the time-line causing the fast auto-scrolling of previous tweets, but producing a small notification bar on top of the tweet one’s just reading and announces “new tweets available”.
- after running it for two days I didn’t observe and RAM or battery leaks.
- scrolling 20 tweets is fast and the loading time for the new ones (on WiFi and 3G) is 3 to 4 seconds; it’s OK.
- being a native app, one can change font/size by going to Options/Screen-Keyboard.
- sports a “conversation” feature allowing you to see your exchange of replies with someone else.
- includes the native shortcuts we’re all used to : “T” for “top”, “B” for “bottom”, “R” for “replies”. There are some more waiting to be discovered.
CONS:
- buggy, no caching so every time you go from one tab to the other it’ll lose time and data reloading everything
- upon exiting the application or even put it in the background, it will slow down the system causing unresponsiveness for more than 15 seconds at times.
- the Retweet function won’t work. There is a workaround by going to “Send To”, choosing “Twitter”, then “Tweet” and then finally editing and sending the tweet. Tiresome.
- OR if it’s true what some users are saying, the RT function does work but you can’t see your own RT (as in the official RT version), while others do. By logging in your web account, you can find your RTed tweet. So is this a feature?
- no separate notifications for Replies and DMs as we were spoiled by all the others developers of BlackBerry Twitter applications.
- this trial will end March, 31st. I inquired by sending a public reply to @BlackBerry and I got a DM saying they can’t comment on how or why is going to end, but that I should definitely watch them. It’s probably going to be another build and we’ll get to be Beta-testers again? We’ll see.
- lack of push notification. I guess in this kind of application push is not feasible having lots and lots of updates to pull.
- OR when closing the application it will start pushing the new tweets. It might also run in the background and not able to see it – there are some application behaving like this.
- support for tweeting a picture from the Media Gallery would be nice.
Piece of advice: to disable the Twitter application, go to its menu and log off! Yes, a lot of people don’t know how to do it!
I love R.I.M! Yeah, Twitter for BlackBerry!
2830 days
Ever since I switched from Symbian to Blackberry, there was one thing I appreciated that RIM does: they work on giving customers the best applications to run. I mean basic applications. They did Yahoo Messenger, AOL, ICQ, the native BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), Windows Live, GTalk, Flickr, My Space and Facebook to name a few. Which means you get push messages and we all know what this means: time and battery saved, low data consumption and no memory leakage.
And know Twitter! We’ve been hoping to get this for quite sometime, but know it’s kinda “official”: the Twitter application done by RIM will be available soon! Of course, the road will be rocky: we’ll have bugs, bugs reports and some updates. But they did it. And that’s my point: here’s a company with millions and millions of customers and these customers get to say their bit. The clients were asking for something and RIM delivers. Unlike so many other giants interested in keeping you at bay and cashing your checks.
I also see Boy Genius Report is writting about it!
PS: More resources are available at BlackBerry Blogs and CrackBerry .
PPS: It’s gonna take some time, the application will be launched towards the end of the year. That’s a long, long time.
Rooting&customizing the Pulse was a long time coming
0831 days
My Android adventure took me on the untested trails of phone hacking. Being afraid I lost my touch (no need for hacking in BlackBerry), I attempted to put a custom ROM on the Pulse, a thing that ate 3 days of my life and was accomplished only partially due to the fact that this smart-phone model is very rare.
By the time I got fed up with it, I did put the Modaco Custom ROM -Stock T-Mobile Style by Paul O’Brien but wasn’t able to put Apps2SD, an application allowing you to install and run all your apps from the SD card – the Pulse is notorious for its limited memory (around 86 MB).
And all of those for what? For ShootMe, an application designed to take scree-shots of…well,the screen! And because of that, in Android you need to take the high-road and master the art of hacking, modifying and customizing your phone!
Here, enjoy along with me this wonderful screen-grab!
How To: Organize Your Call Logs on Blackberry
4836 days
Call Logs in Blackberry are primitive. Let’s face it:if you receive lots of calls every day, you have all the chances to find only your last 10-15 calls sent and received.
But why is that? One of the reason was described above. The others are that people don’t care how the Call Logs are set and that they don’t know how to do it in order to benefit 100%.
To check what’s default one should go to Calls (green OK button)/Options/Call Logging and find the default setting which is set to “None” (capture 1_21_49), which means you won’t see your calls in the Messaging area (capture 1_22_10) – it seems that RIM thinks there are people who prefer it that way! All your calls will be displayed in the above mentioned area in a different form depending of your choosing. For that you need to go in another menu (why is RIM putting the options in different sections is beyond me!): Options/Phone Options/General Options and down to Phone List View (capture 1_23_16), where you can choose from the most recent (capture 1_21_10), the mostly used (capture 1_21_26) and listed by names. Set your desired mode and you’re done.
It seems that in the end there is an explanation for the “short” memory the BlackBerry has when it comes to recording call logs: it keeps a copy of your calls (even from a week ago!) in the “View History” section. Go to any call from your Call Logs (preferably to someone you talk to more frequently) and press “View History”. There you can find all the calls you sent/took from that person with date/type of call/duration!
I guess this is called “evolution”! RIM learns model by model influenced by us, the end-customers craving for simplicity, yet complexity. Seems like a contradiction but it ain’t!
