Interloper View

Image courtesy of    phanlop88 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net I recently decided that Android operating system is now mature enough for me to get a cheap alternative for tablets and phones. Ten inch tablets are all more than RM 1000/-. The exchange rate is US$1 = RM 3.25. In order to test my theory, I bought three devices. They are: 9.9 inch tablet from HK Video (‎AM10D1B‎) (RM 699). 5.5 inch phone from HK Video - also known as Note 3 (RM 599) 7 inch phone pad from Asus (RM 699) UI All three devices came with Android 4.1.x installed. Quite often those using HTC phones and other branded Android phones and devices complain about how the HTC Sense or third party UI weights down on the devices. However, when I started using the above devices, that was the first thing I missed. I preferred the keyboard that came with HTC Sense UI instead of the keyboard in HK Video. Android 4.1 had a lot of added features compared to the Android 2.3 on HTC Desire HD. Battery Life

I just found out that Google Maps Navigation has been enabled in Malaysia even though it is not listed as the list of countries with this feature enabled. The version of the application I have on my phone is 6.14.4 but I am running it on Android 2.3.5. Personally though, I prefer Waze. This is why I prefer Waze over Google Maps Navigation: Waze uses less data compared to Google Maps. Waze provide more information - other Waze users lets you know of traffic jam, obstacles etc. The voice on Waze sounds better. You have more options and configuration in Waze. I read in another article the features of Waze is already incorporated in the application in some countries. I just have not seen in here in Malaysia.

I previously wrote about unlimited storage I found on internet. One of them happens to be Google Plus. Using Google Plus app on Android, you are able to turn on auto backup for all the photographs taken using your Android phone. This worked well but I found the backup stopped working properly - it stopped uploading my photographs. Initially, I thought it was my account because I was able to log into another account and get those photos uploaded and when I logged into my original account, the upload worked. However, that trick only work once. There is now an option in Google Plus to either upload your photos in full size but you are only given 15 Gbytes free space (this will may change with the unified storage - where all Google products will share the space) or use standard size with unlimited free storage. Recently, I came across the following article . I did some experiment and found that the application had difficulty uploading photos that are more than 5 Mega pixels