Is it the end-of-days for the humble headphone jack? As Apple prepare to remove it from their next iPhone - with Android manufacturers no-doubt following suit - I thought now would be a good time to look at the previous occasions when smartphone makers have tried to kill the headphone jack. This is a non-exhaustive history, mostly drawing from my industry experience and drawers full of old…
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Last year, the battery on my Motorola Nexus 6 died. It got hot enough to melt the glue holding the phone together and started bulging - so I replaced it. Now, sadly, the new battery has failed. The phone will suddenly switch off as though the battery were yanked out. After a few minutes it will happily turn on again. Most frustrating. Rather than go to the expense of replacing the entire…
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I'm really enjoying driving the BMW i3. I'd love to have it tweet its driving efficiency, or upload its location to my server, or let me turn on its air-conditioning when the temperature gets too warm - there are a hundred interesting things to do with the car's data. The official app has some of these features - but is slow, ugly, and a pain to use. BMW used to have an API available for…
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How often have you seen a meeting request which says... To join the conference call, please dial 0306 999 0348, then type in your access number (07700 900 951) followed by the hash or pound key. What a faff! If you're reading the message on your phone you have to flip back and forth as you try to remember which numbers to dial. Well, there's a better way! You all know the standard keys on a…
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As I get older, I begin to lose neuroplaciticy. I get angry and confused when I don't understand things. I get frustrated when I have to change my behaviour. It happens to all of us, to some extent, and it's one of the major reasons you should design your apps in a clear and consistent manner. I've been using Android - Google's mobile OS - it since before it was launched. I now love and…
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Earlier this year I was moaning about my Nexus 6. Motorola's crappy battery technology is well documented, my phone was running so hot that the glue holding the device together became unstuck! Eventually, the battery failed. It would report being fully charged, but only run for a few minutes before switching off. Recalibrating and resetting the battery statistics failed to improve the…
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What could be worse than email spam? Animated gifs in the subject line of email spam! This is a trend I've recently started to see on Gmail - here's what it looks like and how it works. So, what's going on here? How have they got an animated image into the subject line? Here's the raw text of the message's subject line: …
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Last year, during Britain's windy season, my car was struck by a tree. I say struck. I saw it teeter and made the wise decision to accelerate through it as it fell on top of me! Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentSlightly more detail of the tree what fell on me. pic.x.com/5fgi1zhyln❤️ 0💬 1🔁 009:55 - Tue 21 October 2014 It wasn't quite as dramatic as some of the footage you see from Russian driver…
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The Motorola built Nexus 6 is just about the worst Android handset I've owned. The USB port is upside down, the screen is smeary at low light, the back is so slippery it spins wildly on any flat surface, the battery is average at best, and the curve of the back makes impossible to type on without gripping firmly. All acceptable annoyances in a cheap handset, but for a "premium price" device,…
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I can only assume that on their first day at Google, new employees are given their Android phone, a ChromeBook, a self-driving car, and complementary Laser Eye Surgery. That's my theory on some of the problems besetting Android's Lollipop release. I've ranted about Lollipop before, and now I'd like to point out two particular problems. All of these tests were performed on a Nexus 4 running…
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I don't get Google. I really don't. Some of my smartest friends work there - and yet, as an organisation, Google continually demonstrates an imbecilic attitude to quality. I've already shared some of my thoughts on Android 5.0 Lollipop - it's slow, buggy, and shows that Google either doesn't bother with testing, or simply doesn't care about quality. Let's take a look at a few examples - all…
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Responsible Disclosure This flaw was reported to both Google and Opera on 23rd October 2014. Background International Domain Names are great! They open the web up to the whole world and allow me to own a domain like 莎士比亚.org. But they are a constant battleground in the fight for security. Homograph attacks are when someone uses two letters or symbols which look the same, to fool a user into v…
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