Category Archives: Gadgets

Adios Android – Getting Rid of my HTC Desire Eye

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I got rid of my work cell phone last week. It was an HTC Desire Eye that I had for two years. I have had Android phones for years and I liked them because I could add memory very cheaply and I could replace the batteries very inexpensively also. I loved the phone for about a year and a half. It made excellent photos and synched very smoothly with our email servers. About six months ago the performance suddenly died. There was about a three to five second delay between I pressed a button and then get the response. Emails were impossible, text messages were very painful and the camera hopeless. I did everything. Got rid of all the apps, tried soft resets, hard resets, everything. ATT and HTC were both useless. It was awful. So earlier this month I became eligible for another phone. Yippee!!!!

I had resisted getting an iPhone mainly because I have the this deadly combination of being picky and cheap (I prefer the term “thrifty”). You see the company has a list of phones you could get for free and if you wanted something else you get to pay for it. The free iPhones had the minimum amount of memory and you know I like my apps and the memory wasn’t big enough for them let alone all the photographs I like to take. I had an iPod Touch with 32 gb that i used for apps including my favorite editing apps, Snapseed and I-Colorama. The thing is that the touch camera wasn’t that great. But I put all my photos on Flickr and I would download the pics to the Touch, edit them and post on Instagram or send them back to Flickr. So everywere I went I had my HTC cell phone, my ipod, and my Nikon point and shoot.

So the two year mark came up this month and I got the info on what the free phones are and much to my delight the IPhone SE with 128 gb of memory is included so that is what I got. And I love it. So now I am just carrying my new Iphone (in its tough otterbox case) everywhere I go including running an elsewhere. It takes great photos and I can edit them right there an post them. So I don’t have to carry three items any longer most of the time. I’m so happy.

A lot of tech folks look down there nose at the SE because it is kind of a step back from the newer iPhones and is smaller. True, but it didn’t cost me anything either.

So anyway, Adios Android. Hasta la Pasta!! and good riddance.

Fitbit Charge vs Garmin Vivofit

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I try and stay active, I really do. I’m 61 years old and I think it is important to keep moving no matter what age you are because once you stop it is hard to get going again. Plus being active is fun.  I also love gadgets and there are lots of gadgets out there to monitor how active you are in a very detailed way.

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I used to have pedometers and they are okay but they are not connected to anything. Later on I tried various fitbits. They are fun and they interconnect with your phone or PC and you can interconnect with other people and comment on each other. I had to take it easy though. Lots of people have more tender feelings than I do and didn’t appreciate being razzed. At first I razzed people who had less steps than I and then didn’t work and then I razzed only people who had more steps than I and people had problems with that too, so I stopped being a drive-by razzer. I started razzing people by cheering them. I’m evil like that and not a very good person. Just so you know.

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But still it was a lot of fun except that Fitbits are easy to lose, very easy. The first one that I lost they replaced free, gratis, and that was great, and then I lost it and I went ahead and bought another one. Then I lost it. Then I bought a better one and I loved it. It would measure vertical distance  as well as steps and then guess what I lost it. So I asked fitbit for a discount on a new one and they offered up 25% discount on a replacement and that is great except there website prices are 30% higher than what Amazon and other online retailers sell the same devices for. Sorry, a 25% discount on merchandise overpriced by 30% is not much of a deal. So I decided to leave Fitbit. I don’t blame them. after all I’m the one who lost these devices. I feel that I am the Johnny Appleseed of fitbit devices. My lost gadgets are all over the Tulsa area.

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So I ended up with a Garmin Vivofit. It is less than half the price of the Fitbit Charge and doesn’t measure vertical distance but it measures steps just fine and it also synchs with Garmin Connect which is Garmin’s online dashboard which is what my Garmin GPS running watch synchs to also. I tell you it warms my heart to be running and both the Vivofit and the watch are both in tune so to speak and are coordinated on the dashboard together when everything is synched up.

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The Fitbit charge had one thing that really irritated me. The low battery life. At first I could get through a whole day plus without charging it and toward the last, which was just a few months of use, it would only make it through sixteen to eighteen hours and was getting less all the time. The Vivofit uses batteries but they only need changing once a year supposedly. They do this by requiring a manual synch instead of automatic and the display is not lit. So anyways I’m liking the Vivofit so far, but I haven’t lost it yet.

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But I miss the fitbit dashboard and razzing by cheering. Garmin has a great dashboard but I am the only one on it… It is no fun cheering and razzing myself. Nobody shows up when I do the search for others. Most of my running peeps are on Strava which is geared towards the GPS watches and is fun but not the same kind of fun.

So a big plus for Garmin for their more affordable technology and a big plus for Fitbit and their dashboard and social connections.

It’s a tie is what I say.

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