[sudo-discuss] Broke fancy smart phone, arg.

[Pete Forsyth]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 11:59 PM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <g2g-public01 at att.net>wrote:

>
>
> Re. Pete & Jeremy-
>
> Kickstarter:
>
> Hardware development can be expensive, so any Kickstarter campaign for
> this is going to have to be well-planned as to cost (and then double it
> from the estimate) and timeline (ditto, double it).  And it's going to
> have to anticipate interference from carriers and surveillance
> interests.  OTOH, with everyone tweaked about NSA, if there was ever a
> time for this, now's the time.
>

Agreed on all points.

>
> $150 of fragile electronics is better than $500 of fragile electronics.
> BTW, Alcatel owns some part of AT&T, possibly what was left of the
> manufacturing arm, that was once known as Western Electric, maker of
> near-indestructible telephones.
>


Hah, interesting. The review so far: the screen is noticeably lower visual
quality than my One S, but it has yet to bother me. It's a little less
responsive as a touch screen too, which seems more likely to annoy down the
road. The screen *feels* like a synthetic of some kind, haven't looked it
up yet; I figure this means it's less likely to smash than glass
(awesome!!) and more likely to smudge (meh, maybe I'll grab some screen
protectors). And I actually like the simple, "cheap" feel -- a continual
reminder that I'm being a little less excessive. Haven't put the camera
through the paces yet. I also read it doesn't have LTE, which is one of the
benefits of TMobile service…so I'll do a speedtest with tethering when I'm
in a suitable location. Speaking of, the connectivity has always been bad
in my apartment, but is almost non-existent with this phone. But since this
phone has built-in wifi calling, I don't think that will be a practical
problem for me.

In other words: so far so good!

<snip>


>
> Other:
>
> Dirty Little Secrets Department:  Skype over a mobile is almost as good
> as landline audio.  Skype is just proprietary VOIP (with surveillance of
> course) so there's no good reason one couldn't develop a Skype-like app
> with built-in voice crypto and landline-grade audio, that would use the
> data connection to get the bandwidth it needs.
>

I've recently been experimenting with Jitsi on my laptop. It seems buggy
and sometimes simply doesn't work, or won't allow me to find my contacts;
but when it *does* work, the sound quality is excellent. I'm told that'
partially because it's true peer-to-peer, which Skype no longer is. Any
experience with, or thoughts about, this free software?

>
> Something else that's needed:  An anonymizer website that people can use
> to access things such as Google Maps without Google surveillance.  Ideal
> case: the server constantly generates address-pair requests more or less
> at random, so your search for the local Circle-A Cafe doesn't stick
> out.  Encrypted link between user and server; user's request goes into
> queue with the random requests, and gets a reply in a minute or less.
> Then a local app on the mobile device takes the data and provides actual
> directions, rather than relaying the "turn-by-turn" stuff through Google.
>

Additionally, it seems like the scheme you describe (decisions on the local
device) would be better in areas without connectivity. Input the locations,
hop in the car, put phone in airplane mode to conserve battery..

>
> Lastly:  Bush's former FCC Chairman is now a lobbyist for the carrier
> industry, and was just recently advocating for data caps, saying "it's
> not too late for caps."  (High bandwidth + data caps = boobytrap for
> high monthly bills.)  One more battle front to fight...
>

Interesting, did data caps get outlawed somewhere in there? I (perhaps
naively) was assuming that the carriers were responding to market demand
when they lifted those...

>
> -G.
>
>
> =====
>
>
> Pete wrote:
>
> G! I love this annotated feature list, and would gladly jump into a
> Kickstarter campaign to produce one. I'm sure I can't be the only one.
>
> Thank you, to you and the others who have repled to my request. Today I
> bought, for $150, a Alcatel Fierce, brand new, which seems to be a
> pretty decent phone with a mediocre screen and a mediocre camera. I
> believe I will be happy with it (all things considered) and am  happier
> with $150 of liability in my pocket every day than $500.
>
> I will also order the repair kit for the One S, and hope I can get it
> back up and running.
>
> Pete
>
>
>
> Jeremy wrote:
> > = And last but not least, default to G.711 audio for voice calls.
> >
> > Just curious. Why G.711 instead of opus?
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Opus_bitrate%2Blatency_comparison.svg
> >
> > Jeremy
>
>
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