the bblog

jesusphone, twenty eight days later

More Pre crap. In no particular order:

• With the 1.02 patch, the camera issues are largely resolved. Hooray!

  But as of the 1.03 patch, the Pre will occasionally forget how to reenter data mode for 15-25 minutes after losing its connection to the cell network. The workaround is to shut off the radio (annoyingly called "airplane mode") and turn it back on again.

• The MP3 player has an album cover view (like the iphone) and a list view, where you can see all the songs in an album and easily jump to the only decent one.[*] One of these views is useful, and one is the default. The default cannot be changed. Annoying.

  *: All That Remains may be, ugh, metalcore, blegh, but that guitar solo (2:35) is just too awesome.

• Speaking of annoying, the "rounded corners and translucent buttons" look is pretty, but I'd rather have a snappy UI than eye candy. Presumably this is a need that will be filled by third-party themes, Eventually.

• Google reader is still broken, because it serves the rich content version to the pre, which requires a real mouse, rather than the mobile version, which would work perfectly. Annoyingly, there's no way to force it to mobile mode, or a way to change the user-agent of the Pre's browser.

  Commenter OX, being not only fabulously attractive but far more intelligent than I, knows that you can prepend m. to google.com addresses to get a mobile version. http://www.google.com/reader/ becomes http://m.google.com/reader, and so on. Gosh, if only I had known that earlier.

• jwz (no caps, you heathens) apparently bought a Pre, and immediately started complaining, like... some other people. A commenter pointed out that you could hack the applications manually, he replied with the usual snark, and then wrote his own app. Consistent!

• I've dropped it several times now, and have inflicted one scuff, making it no longer pristine, which means I can now stop worrying about it. If I was an apple user, I'd would now have to buy a new phone, a haw haw haw.

• While searching the wikipedia article on micro USB for more things to complain about, I discovered a significant technical advantage. The micro USB standard puts the retention hooks on the cables instead of the receptacle, and since the retention hooks are usually the first thing to wear out, this means the micro USB receptacle can be rated for something like 10,000 insertion cycles, which is important, since it's attached to $400 worth of phone. Dilemma! I hate new things, but I also love them!