Mobile-review.com Spillikins #106. Popularity of Phone Hooligans

An unhurried preparation to Mobile World Congress was disrupted by Nokia, which shocked everybody me including by denouncing their own platforms and switching to Microsoft. Our detailed article providing analysis of events appeared the same day. We can add more facts, but they will not change the overall picture. A great Nokia we loved and knew before is dead. I am genuinely sad about these developments, but you never can turn the clock back. The new era is coming, which leads to the change of key players. All things must pass.

I was planning to write about new models from HP/Palm, but Lesha Ikonnikov did it so well, that I cannot add anything more. Many customers wait for some Palm resurrection, albeit as a part of HP now. They believe that a company famous a decade ago, can wake up and impress us in the segment they have lost several years ago. It is wishful thinking I am afraid. My expectations for HP are high, but the success for them lies in other areas. That is why new models announced this time will only be interesting in the USA and add some diversity there, but the overall international market will not notice them.

Contents:

TI OMAP5 Plus Visions of Future

Manufacturers of processors and systems on chip became active of late and attack us with their new solutions. Texas Instruments handled the issue with creativity and offered their vision of devices and use scenarios for the second part of 2012 when TI OMAP5 will start featuring in commercial products. To my mind it sounds too revolutionary and I am not sure all their forecasts will come true, but I like the concept in general. What about you?

At the moment the range is represented by two offerings – OMAP5430 for smartphones and OMAP5432 for the other devices, let's say tablets. Both solutions offer the new generation energy efficiency, but what is more they are built around ARM15 Cortex processors of 2 GHz. Two Cortex ARM15 cores are accompanied by two Cortex-M4 cores to give us a quad core. 1080p video of 60 fps is played well and 1080p video is coded in real time. The same applies to 1080p to 3D conversion. 28 nm processors are used here, which sounds fantastic, but in 2012 such solutions will be common. We will get a real performance breakthrough to substitute laptops and desktop computers. The niche of accessories similar to Laptop Dock Station for Motorola ATRIX 4G will be developing thick and fast.

Phantom Traffic in HTC Smartphones

It became known recently that Windows Phone 7 models have phantom traffic in Yahoo mail. This phenomenon is not universal, but some models suffer from it. As WP7 models are not popular yet only a handful of users came across the issue. As far as we know the same problem troubled HTC smartphones for years, but not many people are aware of it. Let's see together how not to waste money when you use MS Exchange and an in-built mail client in HTC models.

As always the story starts with a letter. One of our readers described his troubles with mail in HTC Desire. I will quote the letter with minor alterations:

"Around New Year's Eve my child had a school concert. Near me another kid was laughing and clapping so heartily that I decided to make a short video of the episode. I decided to send this 12 MB file via mail. I opened my mail client. Corporate MS Exchange had standard settings. The phone tried to send a message with an attachment, but then signaled about an error due to a large file. I gave up and forgot about the incident.

Nothing special happened during several days, but then I noticed that my bill for mobile services reached $50 a day. Surprised I asked for a breakdown of my expenses from the mobile carrier. My daily traffic was adjudged to have reached 300-400 MB taking into account that at home and in the office my phone was connected to WiFi networks. During a brief foreign visit I did not use data roaming, but had one instance of data transfer to get instructions from Google Maps. During 10 minutes in 3G the phone managed to send around 70 MB.

Having made a small research I can say that the problem was caused by Email from HTC. It attempts to send the file time after time despite an error associated with the file size. One colleague had a similar issue when his phone sent a message for $5000 in roaming".

Sounds frightening, but I decided to check it out for myself. MS Exchange settings were standard and my phone had no special passwords or exotic settings. Everything was default apart from data you had to add. Then I tried to send a 12 MB file to repeat the experience of our reader. Despite the unlimited traffic on my SIM card I decided to assess the results with the WiFi router and use the traffic analyzer.

My HTC Desire failed to send a 12 MB file. There was an error and the phone stopped trying to send the message. Then the most interesting part of the story begins. According to the traffic analyzer the phone was attempting to send 5 MB messages over regular intervals. The same happened during 3G connection. At the same time the phone did not signal that the data traffic was on.

I repeated the experiment with Samsung Galaxy S, LG Optimus 2x, Motorola Defy 2 and Google Nexus One. This strange behavior of HTC Desire was never repeated, while HTC Desire HD and HTC Hero did almost the same.

Should we cry foul? I think not. The issue is so specific and affects only corporate clients who use MS Exchange together with an HTC smartphone. Moreover, you will experience a problem only if you try to send a large file. We sent the results of our experiments to HTC and I hope the mistake will be fixed soon. When we get any news from this front I will inform you in due time. You can repeat our experiments, but I think that the results will be the same. But who knows?!

Phone Terrorists and Hooligans

Public people often come across the situation when their phone numbers become known to fans and they are dogged by silly calls. For example, movie starts change phone numbers almost every week and have several phones to get a little bit of privacy. It is easier to call an assistant or dial a landline number, which will not bring you any result due to our hectic lifestyle.

People obtrusively invade the private zone of others. Some do it with good intensions, while others communicate their hatred this way. Culprits try to stay anonymous. They use unregistered SIM cards and free VoIP service to hide their identity. I had many similar stories in my life, but I always manage to discourage people from disruptive behavior. I do not keep my phone numbers secret and you can write me any message and send it to 8-92-murtazin. You definitely have to drop the dot from the number. I get some interesting feedback to this number. It is impossible to answer all messages, but I surely read them all.

Unfortunately, some people cross the line at times. My friend and her boyfriend suffer from spam call. There is even such a service. Our regular reader Sasha Kuznetsov sent us an example of an appropriate ad:

Are you tired of your business competitor or hate somebody?
Bothered by noisy neighbors?
We can help!
A landline or mobile number gets paralyzed!
We work with all carriers in any country or city of the world!
The robot calls your number, but ends the call when you answer it. The same repeats many times

Prices

1 hour - 1wmz
6 hour - 5wmz
12 hour - 11wmz
24 hour - 20wmz

We accept WMZ and WMR

The ad describes the easiest way to make calls from a VoIP. It is quite easy to find the mastermind of the activity, but victims rarely contact the police. They think it is not serious enough, but they are wrong. If we ignore the situation the problem will persist and it will be more difficult to fight with similar services as they proliferate more.

Another associated story deals with hooligans who call and inform about the planned explosion in a particular building. It became a sport in Moscow and several dozens of people often think it's nice to crack a joke. It usually involves sending Special Forces and evacuation of people, which costs dear to taxpayers. I don't think that my family should pay for the entertainment of others. Moreover, I think the culprits must cover the expenses involved and if the person has no money, then he should be subjected to public works for an indefinite period. It is not legal, but sounds just for me.

Unfortunately, it becomes a social disease in our country. Economically, the damages are greater than from real acts of terror.

Do you want to talk about this? Please, go to our Forum and let your opinion to be known to the author and everybody else.

Spillikins #106. Popularity of Phone Hooligans

Contents:

TI OMAP5 Plus Visions of Future

Phantom Traffic in HTC Smartphones

Phone Terrorists and Hooligans

Related links