Posts by Peter Townsend

Review: HTC One

Luddites

All this harping about removable batteries and micro SDs reminds me of a friend of my father who constantly bemoaned the loss of the starting handle in modern cars.

Battery - as other posters have suggested, by a 5000mAh + power-pack. It's more flexible and stores more power than a second battery and is easier to recharge.

SD card - for those for whom 64GB - OK, say 58GB after system - truly is not enough a USB stick and a micro USB - USB adapter is surely a better option if you really must have access to a huge video/music library.

As for back-up. My pictures sync to DropBox and Picasa/Google+, my music is all uploaded to Google Music though I do do carry a few dozen key albums on local storage (original files all on NAS), my books are all in DropBpox (for Fabrik), Kindle or Google Books, docs all in Google Drive, notes in Google Keep,

Any random documents not in Drive are in a DropBox folder.

If I drop/drown/loose my phone there's nothing on it I can't replace from my home storage in seconds (the few music albums and a couple of movies for when I forget the USB stick) or that isn't already in the cloud (everything else).

If you don't "trust" the cloud, why the hell have you bought an Android/Google smartphone to begin with?

I'd have more time for the "must have a removable battery / SD card" crew if any one of them proffered a solid reason for those features that can't be better accomplished by another means.

In short, see title.

Review: Samsung Chromebox

much, much, MUCH too expensive

for £150 I'd have one of these (I've actually had a decent amount of hands-on with one). But at £280? Not a bloody hope. Same problem with the Chromebooks - at least twice the price they should be.

N7Player

Re: QR Code

Oh do grow up.

Kia Rio 1.1 CRDi EcoDynamics

New v Old

Yeah, but did your 15yr old BMW come with a 7-year warranty?

Reviews of new cars are aimed a new car buyers, this isn't Auto Trader FFS.

40,000 Apple fanbois demand ethical iPhone 5

This is an issue with Apple

because it seeks to portray itself as a company somehow out of the ordinary. So when it turns out that its kit is made under near slave labour conditions and its new iCloud server farm is powered by very high CO2 but very cheap Appalachian coal just to save a few bucks the gap between the "magical" and "insanely great" PR blurb and reality becomes rather too wide to ignore.

Motorola Pro+ Qwerty Android smartphone

Agreed, this does seem a rather jaundiced take

You can't compare it to the Razr, that costs well over £100 more.

Also the numbers are ranged across the top of the keyboard because you use the screen to dial.

I'm also not quite sure how a 258dpi screen can be called lackluster. OK Motorola has set the default brightness a bit low but on an enterprise handset that's not a wholly stupid idea with an eye on battery life and seems to pay dividends.

Couple of things I like to have seen covered - how much of the 4GB is free for apps and how do alternate launchers like Go Launcher EX work on a screen that shape? I'm guessing that with a better launcher this handset is a bit of a cracker.

ps..."you'd no doubt become familiar with it over time"....you mean just like every other keyboard under the sun?

CamScanner

Hmmmm

http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=fuck shows 247 uses of "fuck" on the Register since January 7th 2000 while 14 uses of "cunt" can be found at http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=cunt.

OK, most of those uses are probably in quotation marks, but this article isn't using the word fuck in an editorial context either.

I've a suggestion, if you read something and your eye alights on a word you choose to find offensive (it's not a given, I don't find the word "fuck" remotely offensive) stop reading rather than try to impose your restrictive world view on the rest of us.

As for announcing your are no longer going to read the site please grow up and stop assuming the rest of us give a monkey's. That's self-important priggishness of the highest order.

I'm guessing that like me the bulk of the Reg's readership found the choice of scan pretty inspired.

A rapid first hands-on: Nokia’s Windows phones

Shortest and worst

If you don't like loud colours the Lumina 800 comes in black while the 710 comes in black and white. It's called choice. From what I saw today the blue one looks rather fetching - nothing shocking about it.

My Council Services

Dairy Bulls

doesn't matter how big the bugger is, just remember to keep your bag up.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S Android smartphone

@ Ben

Fair point.

Caches

Ben, there are several tiny utility apps that empty all your cache's in a few seconds (App Cache Cleaner is my fave) and can even be set to run at regular intervals of a day or a week or month.

It's basic housekeeping. No "trawling" involved, no rooting. Dumping large apps onto the SD is similarly the work of moments.

Speaking personally removable storage is handy because I can upgrade the size of my SD card if I need to. Last month I swapped by 8GB card for a 16 - I just copied the contents of the old to the new, slipped it back into my phone and bingo. I'm not sure how many 'droid users hot-swap cards on go. If I ever feel the need to step up to 32GB I can, you however are stuck with 16!

Ten... Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S

Yes, it's you...

"Errmmm is it me or is there a distinct lack of evidence to support the headline of this article? None of your reviews give any point-by-point comparison between the review model and the upcoming iPhone 4S, nor the new software features available for it, iOS5.

Not only that, how on earth could you actually do a real life comparison since the iPhone4s has not yet been released?

I'm surprised The Register prints this sort of garbage."

I suspect this is how it works. Reg sees iPhone announce date, thinks, "Ah, good excuse to do a round-up of the main competition from the only real competitive OS".

Random hack is told to knock out 150 wds per phone - which kinda rules out any forensic point-by-point comparison - and give it a gently anti-Apple spin in the interests of getting the brand fanatics frothing at the mouth (again).

Job done I'd say.

Of course there is always some tit who takes it far, far too seriously.

SanDisk Memory Zone

Size

I'm looking at the data from my Settings menu and it's showing as 4.5MB for the app and 1.2 for the data, so 5.7 in total. The apk is only 1.7MB but that means nada. It is big for what it does, but I think I'll keep it on my phone just to remind myself what files I've got where. One thing not mentioned is that you can create accounts from within the app - I've just opened a Box account via it and got handy 5GB for free. And I just discovered 90MB of bug reports on my SD card!

Sony: all new PS3 titles will require PSN Pass for online play

So...

all Sony is actually saying is that the on-line play licence that it bundles with the initial purchase is nontransferable? I'm really struggling to understand all the righteous indignation about this. Seems a perfectly reasonable move to generate revenue, which is what Sony is all about, like any commercial operation. If you want to play on-line, buy the new game or the licence. If you don't want to buy the licence or cough for a new game, play it solo or over a local network.

Nigerians panic over killer calls

This is news?

I am a little surprised at the BBC.

Believing that answering a phone call will kill you is no more idiotic and contrary to common sense and scientific evidence than believing in a Christian - or any other - God.

The difference is that if you grow up in the war torn back of beyond in Nigeria where the nearest school is 3 days walk away or would be if it hadn't been burned down by some lunatic militia that is probably being armed and funded by the UK/US/France/Russia (delete as applicable) you can understand this sort of superstition.

What excuse do the millions of God-bothering idiots in the developed West have?

This is not a "news" story, it's a "let's all laugh at the silly black people" story.

Dell XPS 15z 15.6in Core i5 notebook

Style?

Since so much of this review is taken up with comments about how much the 15z resembles the MacBook perhaps the author could suggest how Dell could have made a thin 15.6" laptop look any different? Make it circular? Have all the corners return at a sharp 90 degrees? Make it out of bakelite?

It's as idiotic as claiming the A380 is a rip-off of the 747 because it has a rounded nose and two engines under each wing or the Nissan Micra is a clone of the Vauxhall Corsa because it has a wheel at each corner and three doors.

To anyone who knows zero about cars the Micra and Corsa look identical. To anyone who knows anything about laptops the 15z and MacBook don't. Adopting a Bloody Obvious design for a given product is not cloning/copying/lazy design it's simply form following function.

How gizmo maker's hack outflanked copyright trolls

Explanation needed

What exactly is a "copyright troll"

"Patent troll" I understand because patents can be a very, very grey area. But copyright is hard and fast, either it's been broken by the unlicensed and unapproved reprodiction or duplication of copyrighted material or it hasn't.

Does the author really see no difference between the actions of the likes of Lodsys and those of film and record companies?

Incidentally I'm not making a judgement on Chumby with this comment, it's just the bias of the headline that concerns me.

Vodafone Smart Android smartphone

@ Jemma

"I have said it numerous times before and I will probably say it numerous times again. A phone is a phone is a phone. It is a working tool. Its a device that can and has saved lives"

You can say it as often as you like, that doesn't make it true. A large percentage of smartphones are not used primarily as "phones" but as pocket computers, media players and data communications devices.

If you want a phone as an emergency device - I wonder how mankind survived without them - get a Nokia C1-01 or similar with a stand-by battery life that can be measured in weeks.

Peugeot 508 Active e-HDI micro-hybrid

Not bad

That's a pretty good write up. I'm not a car nut by any stretch but the Reg's auto reviews are a nice break from the domestic tech and are mercifully free of petrol head stupidity and bombast. Keep it up.

Google Nexus S out Wednesday

Not sure about this

when the Nexus One came out it was clearly the best Android phone about, but this new model doesn't really match either the HTC Desire HD or Samsung Galaxy S on paper.

iPad media apps: Stealthed hobbits thwart Google's flaming Eye

Huffington Post

"Will that cause Googleplexers to quake in their boots?"...maybe not in this instance because there is a Huffington Post app in the Android Market!

This article seems to presuppose that world+dog will be consuming media exclusively from iOS apps despite the fact this quite clearly will never, ever, ever come even close to being the case.

LG whips out dual-core Android smartphone

Battery

At least they seem to have learnt from the HTC Desire HD - a cracking phone but the 1230mAh battery is way too small. Getting a full days use out of it is a major struggle.

Three 'human hotspots' hand out free Wi-Fi

On the bog...

I regularly update the apps on my Hero while parked on the throne or clear out the folders for my various e-mail accounts. Seems the perfect use of time that would otherwise go err...down the toilet!

Google Nexus One

@ Matt115

So you seriously expect a technology site like the Reg or Trusted to flash the ROM of a review handset just to see if Cynogen works on it? Get a grip man, that is what the likes of XDA Forums are for.

And three posts on the one review? You must be scintillating company at dinner parties.

Motorola Droid - the not quite iPhone killer

Shortcuts

"if you want quick access to that app you'll have to use some of your limited home-screen real estate"

You can get a maximum of 48 shortcuts onto the three Android home screens, how many do you want? Even if you fill the main page with widgets you can still fit 32 regularly used shortcuts to the left and right. It only becomes a "confusing morass" if you are a twit.

Peugeot preps 4WD diesel hybrid

Rear wheel regenerative breaking

I'd assume its rear wheel only in order to keep the two parts of the system separate - if you had front wheel regenerative breaking presumably you would need a generator up front to convert motion into energy?