Posts Tagged cell phone
iHound app for lost or stolen smart phones
As a busy traveler, I have lots of things to keep up with when on the road, and in today’s connected world, my iPhone is always in my hand. When deplaning or leaving a hotel room in a rush, it is easy to set it down while collecting other things and leave it behind. Let’s just say I have done that a few too many times. After the ordeal of begging the Apple store to let me buy another iPhone at full price (and being refused by the manager to buy another even at full price…imagine that, a company refusing to take your money for the full retail price of an item), I realized I needed a better plan to protect me against my own carelessness. Apple has no insurance for the iPhone rather an annual fee of almost $100) for its MobileMe recovery service. Such a high fee for a product that is already costly did not seem right, so I set about to find an alternative.
I discovered iHound software, which is an affordable app (only $3.99 for three months or $3.99 for a year for Android). It runs constantly in the background using the GPS software in your smartphone helping you to locate your phone on their web site if it is lost or stolen. You can also send a message to appear on the screen of the phone or sound a siren (or even an authoritative voice message) via a push notification so that you can locate it more easily.
The company has been in business for almost four years and provides an affordable way to track your phone in case it is lost or stolen. It works with iPhones, the iPod touch, and Android. There is even a way to easily gather information about your phone via the iHound web site to prepare a police report if needed. The app can be purchased via the iTunes store with payments possible via PayPal.
Special stickers are also available for purchase to put directly on the phone giving a protected form of contact for someone to reach you if it is found.
While the app does not require a wifi signal to work, it does need to have cell phone connectivity to be located via GPS. When wifi is available, it can also connect via wifi automatically. Save yourself the hassle of paying hefty annual fees and buy this affordable peace of mind. It has certainly saved me more than a few times!
Posted by Ramsey in Business Gear, Travel Light on May 2nd, 2011
DROID ERIS by HTC Smartphone
Here’s my disclaimer right off the bat: I’m a relatively new smartphone adapter. I just got a Blackberry in the fall of 2009. I don’t regularly review “tech” items; I leave that to my in-the-know colleague John, who is great at writing about phones, apps and netbooks. (Me? I dig covering cute capris and flip flops.) Generally speaking, I’m a luddite — though my mom thinks I’m a tech genius since I know how to upload photos to Shutterfly. (It’s all relative.)
That all said, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to check out a touch-screen phone with the Google Android operating system — specifically, the DROID ERIS by HTC. This phone is really, really cool — it’s got some amazing capabilities and personalizing features. It syncs with your Google and Facebook accounts with the press of a button — all of your Gmail contacts are instantly loaded. You can share images you’ve taken with the phone’s camera to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Picasa easily — it really connects beautifully with the major social networks out there. It organizes all of your “communications” with each of your contacts by person — so you have a running log of all phone calls, texts and Facebook interactions with each of your friends.
But what I found after using this amazingly capable smart phone is that I don’t need all these bells and whistles. When I’m traveling — whether it’s to a foreign country or down the road to the grocery store — all I really want is to have instant access to a phone and email. (Twitter is a distant third requirement.)
I don’t need the thousands of nifty applications available via the Android Market, even though there are some silly games that my young kids downloaded that kept them occupied on a recent road trip. There are hundreds of free apps in the “Travel” category, from hotel finders to NYC subway maps to English-Spanish dictionaries, but none are “must have” items for my phone. I’ve gotten along without them for years; I really don’t need them now.
And I really missed the button keyboard on my Blackberry. After three weeks of using a touch-screen keyboard–even with its “word prediction” and “spell correction” — I think I’m a much more accurate typist on my not-near-as-sleek Blackberry Tour.
Here are a few more observations — and I do recognize that it’s apples to oranges when I compare the DROID ERIS to my Blackberry, but, hey, it’s all I know.
The DROID ERIS is super-slim and attractive. I love how it feels in my hands. The home-screen graphics are crisp and clean and downright cute. (The little, green, droid alien guy appears when you power on and off and it’s on the Android Market widget.)
Set up is easy. I have always had my husband deal with calling our phone provider (Verizon Wireless) to set up new cell phones. But I insisted on doing this one, and it was painless. Syncing my Twitter, Facebook and Gmail accounts was a piece of cake with step-by-step visual cues.
You can personalize seven home screens. I fit all of my must-have widgets and contacts on one screen, but for users who are in constant contact with several friends, you can load their info in a easy-access widget and store it on one screen you might use for “play.” Store work contacts on your “work” screen. Put the kids’ favorite game apps on another screen. Put your web browser — if you use it frequently — on the other. You get my drift. You can really customize your phone the way you like to use it.
The Twitter application, Peep, failed a lot. As I mentioned above, I use my smartphone to make calls, check email and send Twitter updates. So it was a bummer when I often got fail messages. I also prefer Blackberry’s Ubertwitter to the Droid’s Peep. In Ubertwitter, you can scroll over (via the trackball) to a URL and it will take you to the site via the phone’s web browser; in Peep, you have to touch the screen “just right” to get a URL to work. I also never figured out how to search Twitter in Peep; in Ubertwitter it’s more obvious how to do that.
You have to charge the DROID ERIS nightly. I ran out of battery power if I was away from my home office most of the day and checking email frequently, or my kids were running down the battery playing games on the phone. I just don’t have that kind of battery drain with my Blackberry. On the DROID ERIS, the screen goes black to save battery power after mere seconds; annoying if you’re checking email a lot (like I do).
In the end, I really don’t think I’ll miss my sample DROID ERIS after I send it back to the manufacturer next week. I’m so glad I now understand what it’s like to use a touch-screen Droid phone with incredible social capabilities, but I’m fine with returning to what I think is a simpler phone, for my simple smartphone ways. My children, however, think differently — they’ll miss the Snake, Guitar Hero and Light Racer 3D game apps they’ve been playing for weeks.
The DROID ERIS is currently solely for Verizon Wireless customers. It’s $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with new two-year customer agreement. Buy at Verizon Wireless stores or online.
Posted by Kara in General Gear on February 26th, 2010
Review and You Can Win: Motorola Debut Phone
Occasionally, a new wireless phone surprises me with its feature set, size and ease of use. The Motorola Debut i856 is one of those phones.
The folks at Motorola loaned me one to try out on some recent travels. And they’re also supplying a new Debut to give away to a lucky Practical Travel Gear reader.
First, a few impressions of the phone. The Debut is Motorola’s first slider phone with Nextel Direct Connect push-to-talk on Sprint’s iDEN network. With a slide-out keypad, it can be used like any other wireless phone. In push-to-talk mode, you can chat with up to 20 friends at once. It can also be used for short-range conversations outside of network areas—just like a walkie-talkie.
The Debut boasts a well-rounded set of features, including a camera for still pictures and video, music player, web browser, calendar, e-mail, text and multimedia messaging, voice dialing, Bluetooth and GPS.
This is the kind of phone I wrote about earlier that is blurring the line between barebones phones and smartphones. Business users might demand more, like a hardware keyboard and larger screen and support for Exchange e-mail, calendar and contact synchronization. But not everyone needs that.
Another nice feature on the Debut is a slot for an optional memory card. If you want to carry lots of tunes, an 8 gb card will hold around 10 hours of music. The phone has built-in dual speakers and a standard 3.5 millimeter audio jack.
The phone is lightweight and fit well in my hand. It’s intuitive, so you won’t spend much time thumbing through the instruction manual.
Even though the screen (it’s not a touchscreen) is small, the Myriad web browser performs well. It’s handy for getting the latest weather and news. And some mobile websites,such as USA Today and the New York Times,also include pictures with their stories.
Prolonged web and GPS use will cause substantial battery drain. But that’s a trade-off of having a smaller-sized phone. If I’m in the car, I’ll usually plug my phone into a charger for more than a few minutes of Internet or GPS use. And I carry a spare battery, too.
The 1.3 megapixel camera produced respectable still images and video. Also, profiles allow different call settings for different activities, such as when you’re at work, out jogging or in a meeting. For example, a profile can be set to receive all calls or only calls from those on your contact list.
The Motorola Debut i856 is currently sold by Sprint for $99.99, with contract, after instant savings and rebate. The phone offers a solid set of features for the price.
But one lucky Practical Travel Gear reader will get a new Debut phone free, courtesy of Motorola. Sprint service is not included.
To enter, post a comment about what you could do with the phone or what features you like the best. One entry per person and you must have a U.S. mailing address. We’ll pick a winner at random.
The deadline to enter is December 13, 2009, at 11:59 p.m. CST. Be sure to include your e-mail address in your post.
Good luck!
Update: Congratulations to Holly B (Comment #64), winner of the Motorola Debut phone! And thanks to all who checked out the phone and left comments.
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear, Travel Light on December 7th, 2009
OtterBox BlackBerry Commuter Case
I’m a new smart-phone user — I just got my BlackBerry Tour a couple months ago and immediately fell in love with it. What I didn’t love was the generic case it came with; so I didn’t use it much, and then my beloved BlackBerry felt naked and vulnerable without protection. Thankfully, OtterBox offered to send me a new case from its Commuter series, and I’ve been using it for the past few weeks.
What I like about the OtterBox is that I don’t have to pull my BlackBerry in and out of a case. The OtterBox comes in two parts: a snug-fitting, custom-molded silicone sheath and a hard plastic shell. All of the phone’s ports (for headphones and chargers) are covered with soft, easy-to-pull-out attached plugs, and a separate clear film covers the screen. I’ve dropped my phone a couple times, but didn’t freak out (that much) because the case protects from bumps, shocks and scratches; my BlackBerry still (seems to) work fine after some abuse in the OtterBox case.
A couple of things that bummed me out about the clear screen film: When I applied it to the screen, some residual adhesive from the paper it had been stuck to remained on the film (the side that faces out, not the side that stuck to the screen). I tried to remove it with my fingernail and a washcloth, but resorted to hard-core adhesive-removal solution to get it off. (Yes, I’m talking about a solution you’d buy from a medical-supply company to take off adhesive that remains after removing a long-time Band-Aid. I was not happy to be applying that near my BlackBerry keypad.)
The film has also bubbled at the edges. I can’t get it to smoothly stick down. (Maybe has something to do with my applying the solution!)
I’m also a little bummed that my BlackBerry doesn’t smoothly slide into the fleece-lined pocket of my Overland shoulder bag anymore. The case — although it is advertised to have a “slick” exterior — can’t match the smoothness of the BlackBerry itself.
Other OtterBox BlackBerry cases include the rugged Defender series — a bit bulkier than the Commuter, offering more protection — and the Impact, which gives less protection.
The Commuter case retails for $34.95 on OtterBox.com, but you can find it much cheaper on Amazon.com.
Posted by Kara in General Gear on November 20th, 2009
