iPhone 5s Day 20: Back that thang up

I got a dig bick,.....


you that read wrong.

that awkward when you read that wrong too.

And said "moment" after awkward.

That was someone's signature that made me chuckle today. Today was a very boring day for the phone, so I'm making up stuff to talk about today. The first is the productivity suite Apple included with iOS7:  Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Pages = Word, Numbers = Excel, and Keynote = PowerPoint. I went through the demos for all of them, and it is pretty amazing what I could create on my phone. I could probably create a document, spreadsheet or presentation on my phone, send it to my boss, and he'd have no idea I created it in the strip club grocery store. That being said, there is no possible way I am going to create a huge document, spreadsheet or presentation on my phone. I'd create something pretty basic, or I'd just wait until I got to a full sized computer. But it's good to know I have the option while Paradise is doing her three songs on the stage.

Next was an LTE showdown between Sprint and AT&T. I downloaded the Ookla SpeedTest app to both my wife's and my phone, swiped all apps closed, turned off and back on both phones, and then turned off Wi-Fi on both phones. The Sprint one had 2 bars and the AT&T one 3 bars. Both phones are sitting in the same spot on the couch. I ran the test 3 times:

AT&T

Sprint

This would be one of those things I didn't know I was missing. What I did notice pretty quickly though is that it appears I am being throttled by my new provider, while my old provider is consistent. Very much a tortoise and hare situation here. Not sure how I feel about this throttling deal. I'll have to find a long download situation to see what happens.

And lastly, photo backup. I'm using iCloud, which is working fine, but I'm starting to feel a little pinch on space on the phone. I should have gotten the 64 GB version, but I just couldn't justify the price at this point in my life. I started out using Dropbox, but it filled up pretty quickly and I didn't want to pay for more space. I then saw that Flickr was giving everyone a terabyte of space. I know that Flickr is supposed to be a social media sort of site, and you're supposed to share your photos, but it looks like you can lock your account down pretty tight. However, much like Facebook, there are dozens of settings where if you miss one, someone or some system will be able to see your photos. While I don't care who sees my photos, my wife is a little more particular about it, so I went through all the settings and hopefully locked them down. I'm going to do some testing to verify, but please feel free to find me on Flickr, see what you can see, and report back. I downloaded the Flickr app, but much to my dismay, it only uploaded the last 25 pictures I took before starting the Auto-uploading for future pictures. The Dropbox app only asked me if I wanted to use cellular data, but it uploaded all my photos over the course of a few days. I then went to the Flickr web site, which had a limit of 200 pictures at a time. I did that for about 2000 pictures when I figured there had to be a better way. A quick Google search netted me the Flickr Uploadr desktop app. Now I can do folders at a time. A 13 GB/1500 file batch took few hours, but it was better than 200 at a time. 3000+ photos uploaded so far, and 1.5% of my terabyte. I think this will work out.

The margarita I had is kicking in good. Good night...

iPhone 5s Day 3: The network is my friend

I knew that Sprint's network sucked when you traveled outside of a major city, but I had gotten used to it. Driving to Asheville from Atlanta, there are a several spots where I start roaming, and a few where my data disappears entirely, leaving my boys asking "What happened to Pandora Daddy?" to which I respond "it's the network boys." On the way back, with my new network, and taking a route even more remote than the way in (US-23), I never lost signal. Pandora played the whole way through and Waze never told me it was searching for the network. I'm guessing Verizon would probably keep me at LTE speed in more places, but the AT&T network is a vast improvement already.

Speaking of LTE, I ran a speed test comparing my 5s on AT&T's LTE network versus my wife's 4 on Sprint's 3G. Test results were staggering: Me 6.7 Mbps, my wife 1.8 Mbps. Not really a fair comparison, but it's just another example of how I've been living in the dark ages.

I set up the fingerprint security today. It still feels a little gimmicky, but it works. And before you say "Marco, did you not hear about the dudes in Germany who took time out of watching porn to hack the fingerprint reader?", let's analyze this a bit. And yes, I believe all hackers, when not hacking, are watching porn. So first, you have to get my phone. That may not be terribly difficult, but my phone is attached to me at most times of the day. So you've got my phone, now you need a good print. That is also not terrible hard considering I use my finger on the phone a lot. Now we start getting into the good stuff. You need to lift the print. Don't let CSI fool you, lifting a print to be reproduced is not easy. But let's say you've been watching CSI since the first Las Vegas season, and you get a print. You apparently need to print it on a transparency in high definition. Your bootleg inkjet printer at home is not going to cut it, and neither is the cheap toner in that laser printer at your job. If you finally manage to get through all that, there is some technique that the hackers haven't disclosed yet because just putting a transparency on the fingerprint scanner is obviously not going to work. Also by the time you do all that, I will have activated Find My iPhone and either blanked the phone or called the cops so that you could make the late evening news as the latest fool to steal an iPhone. So good luck.

I put the case and screen protector on today. I like the case a lot. Very minimal. Screen protector was a slight pain to get on, but it should work until LifeProof gets its act together. I'll take some pictures soon, pending I figure out how to take pictures of the phone, since the phone has the camera on it. I guess I could borrow my wife's again. Maybe tomorrow...

iPhone 5s Day 2: iOS7 rocks your face!!!

I told you all I was quitting at midnight last night, but that was a lie, because I can't help myself. My phone was activated at some point after midnight because I called my home phone successfully, but the bastards at AT&T couldn't be bothered to send the confirmation email. I'm glad I wasn't actually waiting for them. 

I figured out, unfortunately after the fact, that if your backup isn't encrypted, you will have to reenter your login information into most of your apps. That was close to a hundred apps for me. I'll keep that in mind for the next restore.

The phone is fast as hell. 4G is quicker than 3G for sure, but I'm not sure if it's as fast as the wireless companies make it out to be. I'll run some further tests when I get back to the house.

My first "I miss Sprint" moment was this afternoon. I initially set up my account for 300MB, thinking that would hold me over until my job takes my account over. By 2PM this afternoon, AT&T sent a text saying I was 65% through the 300MB. Granted I am out of town and using Waze for my GPS needs heavily, but I used to laugh at people who had to monitor their data usage. Now I am one of them. 

But the main highlight for me is iOS7. This ish is amazing. I don't understand how people hate it. Apple basically stole things from Android and webOS to make their OS better. I'll highlight a few:

1.  Quick access panel: with a flick from the bottom of most screens, you have quick access to toggle wifi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, do not disturb, portrait orientation lock, screen brightness, music player, flashlight, calculator, camera, clock, and Airdrop. I have no real idea what Airdrop does, I should look that up. But an Android phone has been able to do most of those functions forever, and a WebOS phone could do them with a simple tweak. This was the only reason I considered jailbreaking my phone, and now there doesn't appear to be a need.

2. Cards: the quick launch has been transformed into webOS cards. As one of the few people who stuck with webOS until I was forced out, this feels like rough sex, where it hurts and feels good at the same time. However, it only hurts because no one will realize where they got it from. But double tap the Home button and you'll see your open apps. Swipe left and right to see the apps, and swipe up to you close them, instead of the old "jiggly mode."

3.  Pages within folders: I worked really hard to keep all my apps limited to two pages. Even with folders, it was starting to get hard to continue that recently since you could only have a certain number of apps per folder. Now that there are pages within the folders, I'm comfortably in two pages. I can't understand people that have pages and pages of apps. How do you find anything?

4. Auto update: are you telling me that I no longer have to go into the App Store app, go to Updates, and then tap Update All? The phone will now just automagically update apps when they need to be updated? I guess they stole that from Micro$oft, but I'll take it. I cleared my screen before I could take a pic, but here is an example from someone I follow on Twitter:

That's all I've discovered so far. The only negative I have with the 5s currently is battery life. Like I said earlier, this weekend with my limited wifi access and heavy GPS usage is probably not an accurate measurement of what my actual usage will be like, so I'll come back to that topic later next week when I'm back to normal.

 Please forgive any typos in the post. I've been drinking heavily on top of doing the blog post from my phone...