Burps and belly rumbles

So far this has just been a duping ground for moans, groans and over exagerated injustices that have rained down on me. If you look close though, you might just find a post or two of opinion and not complaint.

Tuesday 31 January 2012

Lighting can strike twice!

So what do you know, a matter of 3 days after I blog to the world about my great luck in winning my LG G2x, I've gone and done it again :-). This time my prize is a shiny new iPhone 4 courtesy of @ThreeUK. I believe this now puts me firmly atop the #jammygit league of spawny sods. My first response was to ask if they could exchange it for an SGSII or GNex, but I was firmly told no, and then received a smattering of twitter abuse for being ungrateful. Nothing could have been further from the truth, I was incredibly grateful, but 'if you don't ask you don't get' I was always told.

Now I need to decide what to do with it, my original plan was to sell it, £350ish on ebay looked good. But when I got home from work I was smothered in requests and reasoning from my 3 daughters as to why each of them should have it. I knew I was not going to keep it for myself, first I am not a big fan of IOS, and secondly I am happy with my G2x and my contract is due renewal in just over a months time anyway, and I know that my wife would not look at it either (smaller is better in her universe, guess that's why she likes me). This means that I have the joys of making one child ecstatically happy, and having the other two despise me to the pits of hell. Its great being a dad, I just need to work out how to piss them all of at once, and I'm a happy man. Logically its pointless giving it to the youngest, she has a phone now and never uses it, so it would just be an iPod to her and she has one already. I could give it to the middle daughter, about to turn 13 it would be a nice birthday present for her, but I really think a 13 year old with an iPhone 4 is just asking to get mugged, plus it then sets the birthday present bar a little higher than I want it to go when the rest of them are looking for their own pressies. That just leaves the eldest, 22 and out the house (so she annoys me less than the other two by default). Her emotional plea (for plea read blackmail) is that she has returned to full time education and cant afford nice things, plus she has pulled an ace out of the pack by getting herself a place in Strathclyde University, not sure what the course is, but its an 'ology' of some kind. I also know its now become traditional to get your kid a laptop for heading of to university, but she already a decent enough one, so this is the perfect alternative.

Now I just need to wait on the phone being delivered, jailbreak it and pass it on, and make at least one daughter happy.


Saturday 28 January 2012

A (very) late review of the LG G2x

At the end of last year I was lucky enough to win a LG G2x from Free Your Android, for doing nothing more than hitting re-tweet, anything harder and I might have got it wrong. So with just over a month gone since the courier rang my bell, I thought I would write a little review of my time with it so far. That and the fact I have not blogged anything since June, and this was the first thing that came to mind.

If anyone is still reading a review for a handset that was released on 15th April 2011, which is essentially a re-hash of a handset that was first released in January 2011, then sorry, but it doesn't get any better than this.

I suppose the only thing that's not 100% normal with this review is that the G2x is the American version, and I am in the UK. I don't know if it 'should' make any difference to network reception, but for me it has. The specs are nothing extraordinary, but it does sport a Tagra 2 so is still current and this gen.

T-Mobile G2x is the American brother of the LG Optimus 2X. Both have Tegra 2 dual-processors, 1.3 and 8MP front and rear facing cameras respectively, with HD 1080p video capture. The display is 4 inches of WVGA resolution with 8GB of internal memory expandable by as much as an additional 32GB thanks to a microSD slot, and all powered by a 1500mAh battery. (courtesy of phoneArena.com)


The handset came un-locked (thank you Na-than), so obviously the first thing I did was root it & flash CWM recovery then set about trying out some ROM's. The rooting process was a breeze, although it did require Windows, but hey you cant have everything. I knew the dev scene was not the best, but as the phone had been out for 8 months I did expect it to be a little bigger. It has all the main ROM bases, AOSP (the stock ROM differs little from this), CM7, MIUI, and OMFGB, but very few versions of each base. But my main problem with the ROM's on offer is network reception, for calls and texts its fine, but for mobile data they range from no connection to a poor connection that drops off more than its live, that is except for the CM based ROM's. I don't know if its due to the fact that the G2x is a T-Mobile only handset and the radio (one of only two hardware changes from the EU 2x) is designed to work specifically with their network, but I do know that I have not read of anyone else having the same issue I have.  So my choice is kinda limited by the fact I can only use CM builds (I know MIUI is based on CM, but its really not my thang) which means I have a choice of a few ROM's, CM7 stable, an old CM7 nightly, a CM7 nightly kang, and a couple of CM7 based ROM's. Out of that lot I have only found one that gives me a stable data connection, the fantastically named 'PhoenixBlood!'. I don't know is its a US thing, but they like a dramatic name in the G2x page of ROM developing, Weapon, EagleBlood, and Bionix are some of the other ROM's doing the circuit - all very macho indeed. The only stroke of luck is that the ROM is actually pretty decent, got ADW EX hangin on top and it runs really smooth (one for skymera). Considering the paltry amount of ROM's, there are a few kernels to choose from, yet no-one has managed or wanted to add additional governors from powersave & performance.

Just over a month down the line, I am actually really enjoying the phone despite it not fitting my handset essentials list that well. The screen is like the N1, long and thin, whereas I prefer a fatter aspect, it uses softkeys where I like physical buttons (yeah, I know buttons are out, and softkeys are in), the power button sits on the top right again like the N1 but I am used to and like it on the front below the screen like the HD2 (thank god for button remapper,  a search softkey sits exactly there).

I have just read that ^^ and its incredibly boring, so if you have read it, FFS get a life & go do something less boring instead.

Now for some pics :-



The quadrant score is taken from a max CPU of 1.2G.