Amazon Alexa is a fun little bit of kit. But it can be tricky getting it to work with all your smart devices. Not every company has an Alexa skill - just like not every company has an app. Using Flask-Ask it is possible to bring Alexa smarts to a range of previously mute devices. Alexa coding works on "intents" - the following is a simple intent. That is, you can only ask the skill one thing. No state is maintained, no multiple commands to get right, no complexity. This gets information…
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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 handset, or trying my luck with a different battery, I decided to try a £18 extended battery case. …
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The other day I fished my old nook out of deep storage - only to discover that the battery wasn't holding charge. More seriously, the back had swollen out and looked like it was about to burst. Uh-oh! Inflating batteries are dangerous batteries. Taking apart the nook is incredibly simple, pop off the power button, use a Torx 5 screwdriver to undo the single screw, and then spludger your way around the edges. This is what I found in mine... VERY BAD! A replacement nook battery is less…
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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 situation. So, time to buy a replacement Nexus 6 battery. Cost under £15 and delivered on the slow boat …
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You may have heard of "Range Anxiety". It's the worry that your car will run out of petrol before you have a chance to find a filling station. I have "power anxiety" - the crushing realisation that my smartphone's battery will be dead by lunchtime if I use it for more than five minutes. Over to Ben Smith: ... a frequent complaint is that we don’t want thinner phones. We’d rather manufacturers used space savings to provide larger batteries. You know… ones that last more than a day like they u…
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