Mobile Phones

[PanBiker]

Are you planning on a high data usage Tiz? I hardly use any of my allowance, less than 10Mb in the last month. I use most data via WiFi at home which does not count on your allowance.

[Tripps]

From the sublime to the almost ridiculous - I must mention that I also bought one of these, though for a lot less than the price quoted in the link.

The Brick

Don't knock it till you've tried it.

[Tizer]

No, data won't be high. I realised shortly after sending my previous post in this thread that the mobile data signal at home doesn't need to be high, we can connect to our broadband router wi-fi albeit with a bit of extra technology. It might seem odd that I'd forgotten that but the reason is that we've never used wi-fi at home because of the thick, solid old walls. Being a much extended old cottage some of the interior walls are the old exterior ones and 18 inched thick! That's why we got the Powerline gadgets to allow us to use a computer and a smart TV downstairs, remote from the upstairs router. The extra technology will be wi-fi versions of the Powerline - the present ones are non-wifi because we didn't need it then.

On this basis the best solution seems to be the £1/week Motorola on EE on Pluggy's web link. Mrs Tiz says she won't be receiving calls and texts at home on that phone, her contacts use her landline number. They can have the smartphone number as well to use if she's away from home.

I don't think she'll be buying `The Brick'!

[PanBiker]

Sounds like a plan Tiz. I have a powerline adapter up to my machine for my radio station in the loft bedroom. I used to use a wireless USB network dongle but it was hit and miss on the third floor and I had to keep rebooting it. An odd WiFi extender strategically placed will no doubt do the job for you. She won't be disappointed with the features of the phone if you do opt for the Motorola.

[Tizer]

Mrs Tiz has ordered the Motorola on the £1/week EE from Carphone Warehouse today and it's expected to arrive on Tuesday. She's going to try out the internet directly on our upstairs wifi router first before ordering any wifi powerline gadgets. That way she can find where we do get a wifi signal and where not. The router is in a room above the lounge which has a timber floor so it might work OK vertically to the lounge. But we'll suck it and see!

[PanBiker]

If you get it attached to your WiFi SID on a good signal it will keep those settings for whenever it is in range. I downloaded a small free WiFi sniffing app from the Google Play Store. Its very good and will analyse signal strengths around the building for any given WiFi router, quite useful it shows you where the dead spots are. It's fully featured with channel access monitoring, signal graphing and other stuff like that and has a needle indicating meter and audio if you want. It's called WiFi Analyzer.

Search this directly via Play Store on the phone:

Google Play - WiFi Analyzer

I forgot to add, the phone probably won't come with a full manual, just an advisory for battery charging etc. You can download a full PDF manual from the Motorola website for your model. Easier to refer to than a little booklet with miniature type anyway. It will only have a USB lead as well, no charger, you can charge from your computer or pick up a USB charging plug almost anywhere nowadays though if you haven't already got one. All to keep the price point of the phone down of course.

[Tizer]

That looks a useful tool Ian for working out the distribution of signal around the house. I'm going to be interested to see whether Mrs Tiz gets hooked by apps like that. It's hard to predict, some such things grab her attention and others she'll ignore altogether. Her father, before he got dementia, has always been a fanatic for everything like that, he'd have loved apps on a phone and, like you, he'd have been using it for GPS when walking and for health & fitness. Her mother wouldn't have been interested, even though she was a university graduate and quite capable of understanding complex things. So sometimes Mrs Tiz reflects mum, other times dad! Thanks for all the advice. I'm used to having to download PDF manuals for cameras, now that they are usually a couple of hundred pages long. As you say, the manufacturers saving money.

[PanBiker]

I tend to be a bit of an app junkie as well. If I think of something that might be useful on my tri-quarter I always have a look to see if some clever person has already made an app for it. I don't have any paid ones on my phone, there are thousands of free ones to go at. It's easy enough to try them out and remove them if you don't like them. in addition to Geocaching, Sports Training and Fitness, I have one for Aurora alerts, Amateur Radio Repeaters, SOTA summits, barcode and Q code scanning, the Google Sky Map is fantastic, point it at the night sky and it names everything you can see. I do make an odd phone call and do text from time to time as well.

[Tripps]

Thanks for the App tip. Like you I'm a glutton for new apps. I got a big (64GB), SD card for my new toy, so I can download pretty well ad lib. Biggest problem is knowing what is out there for my amusement.

[PanBiker]

There's certainly a lot to go at Tripps. A lot of the apps aren't very big, just looked at mine (2.7Gb for the lot), not had to copy any onto my storage card yet, base memory only half used for everything I have loaded so far.

I think it's a case of if you can think of an app it's probably already available. I search on generic terms and see what comes up.

[Tripps]

As my old Aunty used to say - what'll do a lot'll do a little.

[Tizer]

Here it is, warming up after being delivered in the last 15 minutes, still cold after being in the depot on our coldest night this winter.



By the way, can the mobile phone apps be used on a desktop PC? I assume the Android ones should be compatible and I probably ought to look on the Ubuntu site to answer my own question. I know some apps would be useless on a PC, such as ones designed for being out and about, but there must be others that would be useful.

[PanBiker]

The cross compatible windows apps certainly can on Windows 10 which I think was primarily designed for a mobile platform anyway. Since I upgraded I am still finding my way round to turn off all the irrelevant bits for a laptop.

Back on topic, I can see that you have the charger less universal mini USB cable, I assume you will have a charger. You will also need small fingers to get the micro SIM sorted. Apart from that welcome to triquarter users corner. The GPS in the Motorola is very accurate as they use both the U.S. GPS satellite network and the Russian GLONASS series simultaneously, accuracy down to less than 1 meter. My Geoacaching app can get me to within inches of caches with coordinates generated by conventional handheld GPS devices. Endomondo has me bang on at my back gate on street map when I set off walking.

[Tizer]

I haven't looked yet but I assume the USB cable will charge it from the computer? But we'll want to get a charger to do it from a mains power socket too. Are we supposed to charge it now? The instructions don't tell us to and it's working so far.

Mrs Tiz tried to get the SIM card in and soon realised she had to pop out the smaller one! What is tri-quarter? The phone has done it's best to get us to create a Google mail account at every opportunity but so far she's managed to avoid it!

[Tripps]

Good luck with your new toy. I reluctantly crossed to the dark side, and started a Google mail account. It is their software after all. I largely ignore it and don't seem to have come to any harm.

Here's a couple of tips based on a month's experience. Try 'Home library' - I found this a few days ago - I've downloaded 2400 books (so they say), all old and out of copyright, but includes the complete works of Shakespeare, Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland, Tom Paine, etc etc.

I like 'Quickpic'. It handles the pictures you take on your phone, and syncs them with something called CM Cloud, which makes them available on you laptop too.

Similarly 'Evernote' does the same with all sorts of data - mainly in he opposite direction - e.g. - capture a webpage photo or text,on the laptop, and it syncs to the phone.

All automatic, and free of charge from the store. If you get any problems don't ask for advice - I'm only just just about dealing with it all.

[PanBiker]

It would be a good idea to give it a full charge Tiz. There are lots of useful bits that come along with a Google account and it's up to you if you want to use use them or not, but the phone will stop oyning you once you have done it.

My reference to tri-quarter is Star Trek based of course, the hand held do everything gizmo beloved of First Officer Spock and the medical equivalent wielded by Dr McCoy (Bones).

[Tizer]

Thanks for all that, Tripps. It's certainly daunting, especially when we're not used to Smartphones. When we tried to connect to our wi-fi router and put in the password we couldn't see how to put in the little digits above the top row of letters. We searched in the manual and found nothing but eventually happened to see something that said hold it down. I think they assume that everyone has already had a smartphone! This afternoon we're going out to somewhere hilly with a reliable EE phone signal so we can download the updates. The joys of modern technology!

We've got it plugged into my PC now, Ian, and it was at 37%, so we're on our way to a full charge. Then it'll be "Beam me up Scottie"! (Actually, I think the world of smart technology is more like being in Red Dwarf than Startrek.

[PanBiker]

Do the updates when you are connected to WiFi. Via the network they will seriously bang your data allowance. I made the mistake of running updates while I was out yesterday as the notification came up on my phone when I was checking for a text. It only took 5 minutes to use my weekly allowance. Its a lot quicker over WiFi anyway.

[Pluggy]

When we tried to connect to our wi-fi router and put in the password we couldn't see how to put in the little digits above the top row of letters.

If you mean what I think you mean with the little numbers on the on screen keyboard, you get numbers by touching the "123 Sym" key in the bottom left hand corner, the screen then changes to show numbers instead of letters. When you want letters again, touch the "ABC" key again at the bottom left hand corner. I don't have the foggiest notion if or how you can get them from the letters keyboard. Do not, repeat DO NOT attempt to do updates on a phone signal. At best its an exercise in frustration.....

[PanBiker]

I'm with you there Stephen, I can't see why they put them there as I have never found a way to access them. Bottom left keyboard toggle does all you need it to as you described. You will find the predictive text is reasonably good and it will prompt you with a short list of probable words as you type. The keyboard has the point and drag feature as well if you want to use it. Just start on the first letter and drag from one to the other, it will leave a trail as you move from letter to letter, depends how big your fingers are, some folk like it.

I have just re read your post with the bit about holding it down to get at the numbers, never knew that. I suppose it's what you get used to, all the additional punctuation is on the 123 key anyway. I suppose the hold it is handy if you only want the numbers.

[Tizer]

I'm grateful for the warnings about update downloads - sometimes (but only rarely) there is an advantage to living where the phone signal is so bad! It prevented us from being able to continue. I must admit laughing when you said you didn't know about holding down the key to get the number. It's often those who `don't know' that uncover something new! When I first got my Canon G11 camera I played around with it and found a number of features that were not mentioned in the manual and not known by most users. I ended up starting a `Tips & Tricks' thread for the G11 on one of the big photography forums and it surprised many users.

Now Mrs Tiz is looking at cases...

[Stanley]

On a pedantic note, I think the Star Trek gyzmo was a tricorder.
Reading this thread makes me even more confirmed in my resolution to stay away from 4G and stick to the shed.....

[PanBiker]

Pedants rule Stanley, you are right of course. On a geeky note you can actually buy one if you want one and a communicator to go with it!

[Tizer]

It looks like we're doing the upgrade over the phone signal anyway! We couldn't find anyway to set it for wi-fi only and it's chosen to do it via the mobile signal. Now we can't stop it! The phone won't switch off, taking the SIM card out doesn't stop it...

Edit: It's stopped now and all seems to be OK. How do you make sure it uses only wi-fi to download the updates? I've searched in the manual and on google but can't find anything about it other than advice like you've already given, to use wi-fi not mobile signal. The only thing I can think of that might have influenced it is that Mrs Tiz had the phone connected to the USB port on her PC for charging at the time she set it to download (and she did that through System/Settings/Update).

Is there a way to switch the phone off when it gets locked into something like the update? I tried holding down the Off button but it had no effect.

[PanBiker]

You need to turn data roaming off.

This is in the Settings, hit the More tab on the Wireless and Networks screen then select Mobile Networks. Swipe off the Data Roaming switch.

This will force the device to always use WiFi for internet connectivity and updates.

Data roaming is for folk who have a decent allowance, on contract or have lots of money. You can turn it back on if you ever need it when away from a WiFi source or hotspot. When roaming is turned off the phone will tell you when WiFi networks are available.

As a general rule, any screen you have open you can minimise with the square in the bottom right of the phone. Once minimised you will see an X in the top right off the app you can either use this to close or swipe the app off the screen. Get into the habit of killing apps that you have used and no longer need otherwise they run in the background.