KPH tech blog

I’ve just published Part 3 of this new series, and have just finished a draft of Part 4. But I still feel like I’ve missed out on something. Looking through my past blogs, I realised what this was…

In the past, I’ve often been fooled by impressive specs or gone off on a ‘I’m going to be different‘ tangent, and it hasn’t always gone exactly to plan.

Even though I still like the Windows Phone platform and still hope and have faith that one day it will be as good if not better than Android and iOS combined, it’s true that I fell under the whole Windows Phone spell and believed it was really good.

You see, before getting my Nokia Lumia 820 in 2012, I had a HTC Wildfire. It was never my main device at the time as I was still using a candybar-style feature phone, a Nokia X2-00, but it wasn’t as up to date as newer Android devices.

I had tried to bring the newer features of Android ICS and Jelly Bean onto my Wildfire, which was now an officially unsupported device stuck at Android 2.3. This involved perusing the xda Developers forum, as well as several self-help guides, to find out how to root my device and flash a custom ROM –  CyanogenMod 10 Buzz. But I didn’t do a nandroid backup, and ended up ruining my device in the long run, as I couldn’t re-flash the original Android installation after I got bored with CyanogenMod.

I also had a 4th Gen iPod Touch at the time, and my experience of both [mobile] operating systems, Android and iOS respectively, wasn’t great, and so I put my faith in the unknown and chose a Windows Phone.

I went with a Nokia Lumia, rather than either the HTC 8S or 8X, as Nokia were creating useful apps and tools for the Windows Phone platform that would only be available for Nokia Lumia devices. I’d also read a few reviews which suggested that, despite the Lumia 820 having average specs for a flagship device (there were 2 flagships at the time – the Nokia Lumia 920, and its lesser sibling the Lumia 820), Windows Phone 8 wasn’t an intensive OS and didn’t need high specs to run smoothly.

About a year into the contract of my Nokia Lumia 820, I purchased a 8.4 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro so that I could watch movies and TV shows on a bigger screen. Although TouchWiz was questionable, the improved features and functionality of Android OS version 4.4 KitKat were great and left an impression on me.

Coming to the end of my contract, I had quite happily been using a few third-party apps on my Windows Phone – most notably, 6snap, a Snapchat client by Rudy Huyn which provided a social network to the masses of WP8 users, myself included, who were missing the presence of an ‘official’ Snapchat app. But, if I remember correctly, Snapchat Inc. tightened up their rules on third-party access and started locking or even disabling the accounts of those users who continued to use such methods (after switching to Android, I found that my account had indeed been locked for suspected malpractice, and needed t unlock it before using it.) The 6snap app was swiftly removed from the Windows Phone apps store and I was left empty-handed and unable to use an app that all my mates were using.

This, here, was the final straw. I had accepted the fact that I’d had to use third-party clients as official apps were non-existent, but now I couldn’t even use those apps. The ‘official’ Facebook app for Windows Phone was about the only third-party app that still existed (it was made by Microsoft and not Facebook – check the developer info), the official Instagram app was still called ‘Instagram Beta’ and wasn’t as feature rich as the 6tag client by Huyn, and after tightening up on their API, Snapchat still didn’t have an official app on the Windows Phone platform.

And that’s when I transferred to Android for my main device, my daily driver. I saw a phone listed at Carphone Warehouse, the HTC Desire Eye, with two 13mp cameras with dual-tone LED flash (one on the rear and one on the front), and its impressive specs for a supposedly mid-range device enticed me.

The only other phone I was considering at the time was the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, a bulky device that was the successor to the S4 Zoom. It’s bulkiness was the result of having a permanent, 10x optical zoom lens (hence the ‘Zoom’ moniker) on the back of the phone, which together with a 20.7MP sensor, made for one impressive smartphone camera setup. The only downside to the phone was that the selfie camera was a disappointing 2MP, and that it was running Samsung’s TouchWiz interface.

In the store, an assistant came over to see if I needed help, and in a sort of, spur-of-the-moment way, I chose the Desire Eye. I wasn’t sure I’d made the right decision, but I had at least made a choice, and I stuck with it, all the while glancing over at the silver display model of the K Zoom during the buying process.

After getting home and plugging in my headphones, I remember feeling rather upset as the audio quality was non-existent compared to the Lumia 820. There was no equaliser built into the settings menu, not like on my Windows Phone or my Samsung tablet. As a result of this cutback, there was no bass, not even with my over-ear headphones.

I was gutted. What had I done? I’d bought a rubbish device with extremely poor, very tinny audio. I had made almost the same mistake as last time – I had been enticed by impressive specs and numbers on a page. 

Thankfully, I later resolved the problem by downloading an app called Poweramp that gave me fully customisable Equaliser and Tone/Volume panels, as well as options to turn up the Bass to a satisfying level. What’s more, unlike the stock HTC music app, Poweramp supported different music file types such as AAC and FLAC, meaning I could play all the music I’d bought on iTunes with a simple drag-and-drop via USB – no file conversions needed.

But I had still been fooled by impressive numbers on a page, and I guess that’s why I’m writing these blogs – to realise my mistakes and hopefully learn from them when choosing my next smartphone.

That’s why I’m not taking this decision lightly. That’s why I’m being serious about which phone is going to be my next daily driver, because I know about the pitfalls of impressive internal specifications versus actual phone usability and/or feature usefulness. 

That’s why I’m even considering keeping what I’ve got, with its slower speeds than current flagships and occasional drops in performance – in case I make the same mistake again, another costly one in the form of a sub-par device that turns out to be worse than I thought.

At this stage, I’ve already got a few devices in mind. One of them is the practical phone, and more fully-featured with a wide-angle camera lense. But there’s another phone that I’m still siding towards, even with it’s superior dual-camera setup but slightly inferior video recording capabilities.

Many people would probably just go with the safe option, and walk away with a Samsung Galaxy S7 or an iPhone, but I still believe there are better devices out there if you’re willing to explore the market a little bit and do your research.

Which, I hope, is what this blog series is…

Chris K.