DIY Nexus 4 Refurbishment

At the time of writing my full-time device, for work and play combined, is a Moto G. There's nothing much to tempt me away at present, given my usual caveats about "phone-sized phones" and wanting decent value for money. My better half dropped her old Nexus 4, several times, until the digitiser finally gave up and she inherited my unloved Z1 Compact. Whilst I wait for my next phone to be announced (Moto X2? Moto G2?) I decided to refurbish the Nexus 4 myself, and here's how it went...

WARNING: This is not a "how to", should not be mistaken for step-by-step guide, and contains very mediocre photography...

I had nothing to loose. The back had been cracked and smashed for a while before the final accident which took out the screen glass and digitiser, leaving the touch screen completely dead. The phone was as good as useless, so I couldn't really make it less functional with my average DIY skills!

For less than £40 I was able to source a replacement screen/digitiser unit and a back glass panel from eBay. I opted for just the glass panel for fixing the back of the Nexus 4, although you can get the whole back case unit including (or excluding if you wish) the coils for wireless charging and NFC.

The screen/digitiser unit included a set of "handy tools". The Torx screwdriver was actually too small, so I ended up using my own.

The back cover is mostly cosmetic on the Nexus 4, so I opted to start with the more important screen/digitiser. A couple of Torx screws and some levering with the plastic tools and the back cover popped off. A further 11 or 12 small Philips screws later and the battery and plastic motherboard covers were free and removed. The battery in particular was held in place with strong adhesive, this took some encouragement to release from the case!

The links between the motherboard, daughter-board and other components like the rear-facing camera and 3.5mm jack were next to be disconnected, then each of those parts were removed from the device. Knowing I had to put this bunch of parts back together once the screen was replaced, I scored geek points by numbering the components as I pulled them out, making re-assembly much easier.

At this point "the device" was was just a screen/digitiser and some side buttons! This matched (almost) the state of the screen/digitiser unit I had been supplied. The compare and contrast was interesting, as the numbers of the parts didn't totally match from the original. I wasn't surprised, this would most likely be the evolution of the manufacturing process during the time the Nexus 4 was being manufactured, leading to different part numbers along the way.

One genuine omission on the new screen/digitiser unit was a diffuser which should sit in front of the notification LED. On the left the original clearly has a white diffusing layer, which is actually secured between the screen and the casing. On the right, there is no diffusing layer, you can see straight through to the black outer casing, which is almost transparent when any amount of light is present. I added my own diffusing layer, made crudely from printer paper, but it seems to have done the job!

Re-assembly then began, starting with the side buttons, the camera, the 3.5mm jack, the daughter-board, the main motherboard, the plastic motherboard covers and the battery. I had a scary moment when the device didn't power up after re-assembly, but a few minutes on charge from a wall socket subsequently revealed the battery was flat. In hindsight this makes sense; with touch input not working, I was unable to actually turn off the Nexus 4 in its broken state, so I most likely left it in a corner somewhere where it would have drained entirely!

With the screen/digitiser replaced, I started work on the back cover. Having gone for the cheaper option of purchasing just the glass panel and not the entire casing unit, I had to remove the old glass panel fro the plastic outer case. The glass was already shattered in one corner, so starting there I began to pull apart and pick out the shards of glass. The NFC/wireless charging coils made this job trickier; they are on effectively a gold sticker, pressed onto the inside of the back cover. I had to peel this off the old back cover with some force due to the strong adhesive, but not so much force as to break or tear the coils!

The plastic table cloth was very useful, as at the end of this glass work I was able to round up and dispose of the large amount of small pieces of glass, not the kind of stuff you want to be on your kitchen floor when you're walking in barefoot to get your breakfast in the morning!

Having picked out all the glass pieces, the back cover was free of its original panel. Almost. There were still many bits and pieces of glass and other dust and grime, which would need to be removed to ensure a good adhesion with the new panel. Some rubbing/cleaning alcohol and cotton buds did the trick to clean up the plastic case ready for the new panel.

Before assembly, a compare and contrast was again interesting. The new glass panel did not include the speaker grill, or a small square rubber spacer around the rear-facing camera. They were relatively easy to transplant to the new glass panel however.

The last steps were the placement of the glass panel on the back cover case, and attaching the back cover to the device again. One more boot up confirmed that the back cover work had not broken anything, and the refurbishment was complete.

Whilst I've flashed more ROMs and rooted/jailbroken more phones than I'd care to mention, I've never attempted any hardware work on any smartphones, so I was chuffed that this one worked out well. Given this was a popular device, there were lots of helpful articles and videos on the Internet for reference, so I didn't have to do much brain work myself! I just has to ensure I wasn't too clumsy with the small components and delicate electronics! Having brought it back to life, I'm looking forward to using the Nexus 4 with its beefier specs compared to my Moto G, and hopefully it will tide me over until my next phone is announced and released!

EE Kestrel Mini-Review

As usual, this loan device came courtesy of Steve and Ted from Phones Show Chat, and is a curious one, something a little different to the flagship devices which get most of the attention of the technology press. I hesitated to title this as a mini-review, it's certainly not a full review, the reasons will become apparent. In the end it's more of a comparison to its nearest competitor and my current day-to-day phone, the Moto G.

The EE Kestrel has a 1.2Ghz quad-core SnapDragon 400 CPU, 1GB RAM, 4G connectivity, a micro SD card slot, 4.5” qHD screen, and a 5MP camera. The obvious comparison is against the Moto G, which now has a 4G model which also has a micro SD card slot. The Kestrel and Moto G share matching CPU, RAM, connectivity and micro SD specs. Their cameras are on par with each other, both pretty poor. Their speakers are similar, both distort at around 50-60% volume. They both have a notification light! Whilst being very similar, here is how they are different...

Kestrel Positives

• Price: At £99 the Kestrel wins by between £20-£60 depending on where you buy your Moto G, and if you buy the 3G or 4G model.
• First impressions: The Kestrel feels snappy on first use, it doesn't feel like it weighs much either when you first pick it up.
• Capacitive buttons: Gives more screen space versus on-screen buttons.
• Connectivity: SIM unlocked it works with Three 4G perfectly, which is great given Three is most mobile geeks’ network of choice!
• Some genuinely very interesting OS additions on top of a base Android build, including:
• “Networked apps" - you can control access to wifi and mobile data per app.
• “Startup manager" - control which apps can or can't launch on device boot.
• “Notification manager" - control which apps can send push messages to the notification panel.
• "Do not disturb" - on a schedule, per contact restriction of ringing/vibrating.
• “Power saving" - including ability to select protected apps which are kept running no matter what, an analyser to let you know any power-intensive background apps, and another analyser telling you settings that may be adversely affecting battery life (GPS, screen brightness, etc).
• “App operations" - show how often each app calls APIs such as location services, personal data, messaging, and device hardware.
• Audio profiles (a la S60/S40 in the old Nokia days) and a nice easy way to change between them form the notification shade.
• Split screen for settings - with the "all" pane with the usual Android settings menu, and the "general" pane which has just commonly-used settings, not cluttered up by all the other million and one settings in the "all" pane.
• Two built-in launchers, although they’re called "home screen styles"...
• One for normal not tech-savvy folk, which has no app drawer, all icons are on the home screens (a la iOS).
• One for even less tech-savvy folk, with big easy tiles (a la Windows Phone) for apps and commonly used functions. This would be truly great for those with no interest in learning to use a smartphone, but who want a little more than a feature phone can offer. This home screen style also bumps up the system font, a giveaway that maybe this is aimed at the older person?!

  

Left: Choose your home screen style.

Middle: "Standard" style. No app drawer, just lots of icons like iOS.

Right: "Simple" style. Probably aimed at smartphone novices.

Kestrel Negatives

• The capacitive buttons aren't very responsive, and their lights turn-off too quickly (the only setting is auto-off and permanently off).
• The screen is pretty dull, and only qHD (even the Moto G has 720p).
• The charger (top) and headphone (bottom of left edge) ports are in unorthodox places, a little annoying.
• Whilst the built-in launchers have their use-cases, anyone reading this blog post would HAVE to install an alternative.
• In the capacitive buttons row the Kestrel has an old school menu button instead of a recent apps button.
• The OS is v4.3 and unlikely to be updated in a timely schedule, if at all... (a side effect from all the customisations which have been added?)
• And the deal breaker... 8GB internal storage. Not so bad given the presence of a micro SD card slot, but this 8GB is partitioned such that apps have less then 1GB. I couldn't even finish installing half of my usual apps. This is exacerbated by the presence of built-in apps like Facebook, Kindle, EE Film and more which you can’t uninstall.

Left: I didn't get to install even half of my usual apps when this happened.

Right: There's loads of space left, just not for apps.

I'd conclude that the storage partitioning is a complete deal breaker for me, so much so that I couldn’t use it as my full-time device to test it properly, and find out how good the battery life was for example.

Huawei/EE have put some very nice touches on top of Android. Some of these are available on other operating systems of course; on Android they may be available via a big bunch of third party apps, plus the need for root in some cases, but they are all here by default on the Kestrel. Whilst the built-in non-removable apps are a pain, the extras on top of a standard Android OS build are mostly commendable, usable, and designed fairly well. I think a lot of normal (non-geek) users would find them useful. To go a step further, the "simple” home screen and launcher could be the basis of the perfect smartphone for an older person or a complete smartphone novice. This is a great Android smartphone for a novice, as Android is still too complex for the average non-geek, and this device with all its customisations makes it much easier for the inexperienced user.


For the money, you would never expect a great camera, high-end CPU or great quality screen. It's great that the Kestrel does 4G at a cheaper price than the Moto G, but the Moto G has a better screen, doesn't suffer the app space partitioning, and is hugely more likely to be kept up-to-date. I would pick the Moto G over the Kestrel any day, though the Kestrel is a very, very interesting device with some very nice touches.

Feels Like a New Moto G

I factory reset my Moto G last night and set everything up from scratch. I'd not done this since I bought the phone 7 months ago. It took until past midnight, and I was short on sleep anyway!

However, battery life in the 48 hours since the reset has been much better, and the feel around the operating system is much quicker, along with only one app crashing where previously there would have been several. This is with the same set of apps and data as before the reset. To be complete in the detail here, that 7 months usage did include the update from Jelly Bean to KitKat. The conclusions are therefore:

• Android now behaves like Windows, in that users who consume lots of software/apps/services will accumulate crud, which over time slow the device down and make random things (crashes, force closes) happen, and only a fresh install gets you back to the speed and stability you know the hardware is capable of.
• Major version updates of the operating system should always be followed by a factory reset where possible.
• Android's native backup and restore of apps and app data is still pathetic, and very rarely restores a complete set of apps or app data, if it starts at all. There’s very little control of how it happens, and no web portal to see the apps Google has linked to your account, such that you know the apps it will restore, and have a choice to prune the list. Android is far, far behind iOS in this area, which has had flawless back and restore for years.
• The Moto G really is a brilliant device, especially given the context that this (albeit non-4G variant) 16GB model cost me £81 brand new from Tesco with ClubCard vouchers plus £3 for a SIM unlock.

None of this is news par se, but as one of those annoying folks who wants his phones to be "phone sized" (that's around 130mm x 65mm for me) it does justify my feeling that there isn't a better phone out there for me right now, over 7 months after the Moto G originally 

I've been tempted by a Moto X, the natural migration path in some ways from the Moto G, but as it is now a year old, a successor is likely around the corner. Given the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini and HTC One Mini 2 were both disappointing and overpriced, my hopes for a new phone-sized phone to purchase seem to rest on rumoured devices such as:

• Sony Z2 Compact, where they'll hopefully have fixed the Z1 Compact's problems like the under-performing camera, the nasty factory-fitted screen protectors, and the chassis design that makes it feel larger than it is.
• Moto X2, where they'll have a much better camera in than that on the Moto X, and release it in the UK promptly (versus 6-7 months delay on the Moto X after it launched in the US)
• Some other thing that's a bit off piste and will surprise me into a purchase (a small Xiaomi device, a OnePlus One Mini, etc)

That list doesn't include anything too concrete, or even anything likely to be released in the near future. It's just as well this feels like new Moto G since the factory reset, as I seemingly won't be buying anything actually new any time soon...

Android Needs A Better Security Update System

Recent security issues such as Heartbleed, which reportedly affects Android 4.1.1 (http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/google-services-updated-to-address.html), and permissions being a bit too permissive (http://www.fireeye.com/blog/uncategorized/2014/04/occupy_your_icons_silently_on_android.html) have both apparently resulted in Google releasing fixes to their partners. We all know that their partners, the device manufacturers, have a poor history at updating devices, especially those devices which are more than a year or so old. In some countries, mobile network operators add a significant delay to the update process, sometimes many weeks or months.

It must therefore be time for Google to implement a direct system for applying security updates to devices, which does not rely on device manufacturers or mobile network operators. Sure it's not the ideal scenario; both device manufacturers and mobile network operators would much prefer to test the updates before releasing them into the wild. However, the direct system is surely better than having many hundreds of thousands of devices stuck on vulnerable versions of an operating system? Depending on which set of statistics that you look at, there could be anywhere from 10% to 34% of Android devices in use today on the 4.1.1 version that is vulnerable to Heartbleed.

Somewhat ironically, Microsoft's Windows operating system, which is not usually held up as a shining light for security best practice, has had a direct system for updates for many years. It's not perfect or 100% interoperable in every scenario, due to the massive array of both operating system customisations and end user software on the market for Windows. However, it does give Microsoft a direct route to deliver security patches, a route which isn't dependant on anybody else (outside of the corporate environment anyway, where rolling out updates is typically managed by the organisation centrally in a controlled manner).

Apple has the klout to do system updates direct for its iOS devices, but having control of the hardware and operating system stack end-to-end means there are less integration risks than the plethora of Android-based devices in the wild. Maybe that appeases the concerns of the mobile network operators. Apple also control app releases in their App Store much more than Google do in the Play Store, and the apps themselves have far less access to the operating system, with much fewer and wider ranging APIs available to app developers. Maybe that too reduces the risk of interoperability failures when updates are rolled out without mobile network operators having their testing time.

Google Play Services, a set of core modules responsible for providing the majority of APIs to non-system apps (amongst other things), are already updated directly from Google without any middlemen and without a user having to visit the Play Store, tick any boxes, or even "accept" the update. This system works already, and is responsible for bringing some new features to devices without them needing an operating version upgrade or a firmware upgrade from the device manufacturer. It would therefore not sound inconceivable that the next major version of Android, be it numbered 4.5 or 5.0, should include some form of device update system, similar to that used for Google Play Services, to bring security updates to users in a timely manner, for the good of everyone.

The Moto G, And Updating Without New Firmware

It's widely recognised that Motorola, now owned by Google, have created the best value-for-money phone this year in the Moto G. I managed to get hold of the 16GB model from Tesco in the UK for £81! It retails for £129 normally, but Clubcard vouchers brought that down, and with a £2 SIM unlock from eBay, it is comfortably amazing value for £83 all-in. However, in the week since I've had the device, it's something less obvious which has surprised and impressed me.

The first was on 9th December 2013, when the list of apps with updates in the Play Store included "Motorola Boot Services". Whilst the update description merely said "Enhancements to the power-up experience", the update actually changed the initial boot-up animation to a Winter-themed one. I've meddled with boot-up audio and animations before on other devices, but that required you to have root, as it would mean replacing protected system files. Motorola have however built the Moto G firmware such that a Play Store app is able to modify these system files. A new boot animation capability isn't going to change the world, but it's something I've not seen any other Android manufacturers put into their devices, and is a nice touch and something different from Motorola, as well as a pretty clever idea. I also love that the boot animation app package is called moodles! (com.motorola.moodles)

The second was yesterday, 12th December 2013, when another Play Store update caught my eye, "Motorola Camera". The LG Nexus 5 launched with Android 4.4, and was updated recently with new firmware images to 4.4.1 and 4.4.2. Whilst the 4.4.2 update's change log was slightly shrouded in mystery, the 4.4.1 update definitely contained camera app improvements. This is great for the Nexus 5 owners, however, the clever thing Motorola have done by siphoning off the camera app into a Play Store updatable package, is to allow updates to the camera app without touching the entire phone's firmware. That means much less hassle getting the firmware updates tested, regression tested against existing functionality, and then getting it approved and tested by networks/carriers around the world.

A look at Motorola's entries in the Play Store (below) shows there are quite a few apps which can update via the Play Store, including the FM Radio, the Migrate app, the Assist app, the SMARTACTIONS app... All of these can be updated without the need for the lengthy process of building, testing and network/carrier approving a new firmware. Google Play Services was updated at Google I/O this year which allows core APIs, services and apps to be updated by Google without manufacturers releasing new firmware as well. Google have also started to release other apps into the Play Store such as Calendar and more recently Keyboard, and the likes of GMail, Maps and YouTube were already updatable through the Play Store, so all your core Google apps are updatable without firmware updates too.

The sum of all of this is that whilst the Android version problem is not getting any better, the version problem itself is in fact becoming less and less of an issue. Getting those version updates for your non-Nexus phone, give or take the highly popular devices like the Samsung Galaxy S4 or HTC One, is slow due to development time and network/carrier approval process. Or for many other devices updates never happen at all! Now however there is an argument that you're not missing out on a huge amount if you're not running the latest point release of Android, given all the other software components can be updated outside of firmware updates, and especially if you have a Moto G of course!

iPhone 5c Lust!

Unfortunately, I believed the rumours leading up to the Apple launch event on 10th September 2013 which were suggesting that the new colourful iPhone would be a "cheap" device, maybe even so cheap that it would be within reach of the those in developing countries.

As a mobile enthusiast, if you want to be able to comment on the industry, be able to genuinely make comparative commentary between devices and ecosystems, you simply have to have an iPhone. That or have very convenient access to one, and with my better half moving from iPhone to Android, that's left me needing one of my own. Whilst not the biggest by market share any more, the iPhone is still arguably the single most important device, if not the most important ecosystem, and every product announcement, price change or hardware glitch becomes mainstream news.

Apple's service of keeping older handsets eligible for newer operating systems is very commendable, something which is much easier to maintain when you don't have the disconnect between one company writing the operating system source code, and another company making the hardware and customising the operating system almost to their heart's content. Android phones in particular can find themselves stranded on very old versions where a manufacturer has seemingly lost interest. Yet it is only this year that the iPhone 3GS, released in 2009, has fallen off the support train being the newest device not to have iOS 7. This however means that the old 3GS I can see in the corner of the room, next to a bunch of charging cables and a couple of old Android phones, is no longer good enough for that job of being a relevant comparison device.

So with the rumours of the 5c being such a cheap device, I was quite excited at the thought of being able to buy an iPhone again. It's not feasible to buy full-priced, or even second-hand iPhones of the latest generation or two when you are using them as comparison devices, they're simply too expensive (although they do hold value very well of course). I reckon anything up to £350 at a push and I was in, and the fact that they were coloured only made me lust more. 

I'd already been eyeing up the HTC One Mini in blue, and I'm glad that manufacturers have started building colourful devices again. The multi-colour approach has in recent years been most utilised by Nokia in the Lumia range, and I really hope they've sparked all the manufacturers to think again about colour, and take us away from the land of black rectangles!

Needless to say I was of course then disappointed when Apple announced that the iPhone 5c would start at £479, completely out of the price range for a device used mainly for comparison purposes. Not only that but as I buy all my devices SIM free, it is probably too expensive even to buy as a main device, and I'm not even sure I could live with iOS on my main device even if I thought I could justify the cost.

We now know that the iPhone 5c was never going to be a budget device, and actually sits nicely between the 4S and 5s (yes, one is upper case and the other lower...) in the Apple range, allowing Apple to drop the iPhone 5, and presumably make a lot more margin on each 5c they sell, boosting profitability, whilst adding new marketability and product differentiation in the 5c with its coloured casing. Very smart move as ever from Apple, but a shame for me and anyone else who were excited to pick up a shiny new colourful budget iPhone!

BlackBerry Q10 Mini-Review

Thanks to Steve and Tim from Phones Show Chat, I've been lucky enough to get a short loan of a BlackBerry Q10, and I've been testing it out as my almost day-to-day work phone*. All email and Internet access plus outbound calls have been on the Q10, leaving only inbound calls on my previous handset. I was concerned that in going after the consumer market, BlackBerry's version 10 operating system would lose some of the efficiencies of its predecessors as a raw efficient phone call and email machine, instead going after flashy graphics and fancy gesture controls. Well, they have indeed gone after those features, but the physical qwerty keyboard is happily alive and well! This is only a mini-review due to the short time period I had with the handset, and that I was unable to get enough time to test out some major features with a busy workload!

*The almost is because there was simply too much hassle in 1) cutting up my current mini SIM into a micro SIM, plus 2) getting the IT department to remove the BES service on my account, then have it put back on a week or two later!


The Q10 is BlackBerry's latest incarnation of their most traditional form factor; the wide candybar with a physical qwerty keyboard. It's where they made their name many years ago, and is still what most people think of when they hear the word BlackBerry. It's also a favourite form factor of mine for work and getting things done, having already tried touch-based keyboards for the that purpose. When typing acronyms, technical terms, names and lots of punctuation into emails whilst on the move, which my job regularly requires, I still find there is nothing better and more efficient than a physical keyboard. Unfortunately for me, there can't be much other demand in the market for this, as this form factor is now an endangered species.

BlackBerry OS 10

The Q10 launched with BlackBerry OS 10, which is a big departure from the recent BlackBerry OS 5, BlackBerry OS 6 and BlackBerry OS 7 versions seen on the last few years' worth of Bold, Curve and Torch devices. Out go a lot of the old style menu driven functions, and in come swipe gestures. Out goes the entire concept of a traditional home screen used by iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Out goes the nasty low resolution displays and slow CPUs and in comes a lovely screen, lots of RAM, and with it some very nice transition animations. Fortunately this all runs very smoothly, which is probably no surprise given that BlackBerry OS 10 is built on QNX, a real-time operating system built to be dependable and lag-free in multi-tasking environments. Seriously  the animations around the OS are buttery smooth, to borrow a phrase from Google! At the time of writing the Q10 was running version 10.1, with version 10.2 allegedly being around the corner based on leaks into the wild earlier this month.

The new gesture controls take a while to get used to, as does the lack of a genuine "home" screen. The "main" screen is arguably the multitasking view, which gives a vertically scrollable 4x4 list view of running apps, which works really well. Swiping to the screen on the right gives you a horizontally scrollable app drawer, where apps can be re-ordered and put into folders like iOS and many Android-based devices. Swiping to the left from the multitasking view takes you to BlackBerry hub, a unified messaging area for all your email accounts, SMS, BBM, notifications, and calls. Swiping down from the top of the screen in any of these views brings up quick settings for WiFi, Bluetooth, Alarm and a link to the main settings area for the whole device. Within some individual apps this top down swipe gesture gives you the app's menu area, and commonly the app's settings and shortcuts. Swiping from the bottom of the screen upwards at any time takes you back to the multitasking view, which as previously mentioned makes this view (arguably) the home or default screen if you were forced to pick one. Check the bold sections there, that's a lot of gestures to remember! As a full-time geek I found I got my head around this eventually, but I'm not so sure the average user would find this easy at all, especially compared to simpler user experiences and paradigms found in iOS and Android.

Multitasking

App Drawer

It should be noted that BlackBerry no longer requires BES or BIS connectivity with OS 10, where OS 7 and previous did. For the average user this is great, as BlackBerry bolt-ons for BIS were only ever confusing, and forced traffic through BlackBerry's own servers which weren't known for their stability, particularly during 2012. For business use, a server-side upgrade to BES 10 is required for the handset to use BES to sync email and PIM data. With my employers not forking out for this paid-for BES 10 licence and upgrade, I opted instead to use ActiveSync. In practice this worked just fine, although during my test period I found it to be 10-20 seconds slower updating email and calendar entries. The standard Microsoft Exchange-based remote wipe functionality wiped the entire device, as opposed to removing the ActiveSync account and its related data.

Apps

My primary use case during this brief period was for work purposes, which only really needs call, SMS and email functionality, and these all pass with flying colours. I use Evernote a lot, and was excited to find it was integrated into the OS. Until I found it was very basic, not even bringing in tags for example. There is no standalone Evernote app, as there isn't for many other marquee services and apps found on iOS and Android, and even Windows Phone in a lot of cases (probably because Microsoft are paying for them). This was one of the areas I didn't have time to fully explore though, as I was using the Q10 only for work purposes, but anecdotally there do seem to be many big-name apps missing from the BlackBerry World app store, and quality games also seemed hard to find. If I were to have the handset for personal use, I would also have tested Google services integration, and was unsurprised when I found very little in the way of first-party Google apps in BlackBerry World, instead finding third-party paid apps for access to Drive and Maps for example. Note that anyone using Google 2-step authentication will have to use an application-specific password to add your Google account for email, calendar and contact sync.

One very interesting feature I ran out of time to test was being able to run Android apps within BlackBerry OS 10. At present this is limited to Gingerbread (v2.3) compatible apps only, but version 10.2 is rumoured to bring support for Jelly Bean (v4.1) apps.

Hardware

This is the best hardware qwerty keyboard device I've used. Unfortunately that's not a great accolade, as all the other efforts in this area, particularly the Android-based ones, were so incredibly poor. We haven't seen an Android phone with physical qwerty keyboard in the UK since the Motorola Pro+ in December 2011, which is 18 months ago, and that too was poor, under-powered and underwhelming in almost every way! There is no such thing as an iPhone with a physical keyboard, and next to none for Windows Phone. The last big stand on physical keyboards outside of BlackBerry was by Palm (subsequently bought out by HP) with the Pre range of handsets, and that didn't end well! So it seems this is a dying breed, which is a real shame for those who love the form factor.

The keyboard buttons have slightly softer click than previous BlackBerry models, but still retain the per-button curved raised edge, making each button easy and quick to locate under your thumbs. I found I was equally fast on this keyboard as I have been on all the previous generation of BlackBerry handsets. The overall build quality is great, very sturdy, and has a great feel in the hand. I didn't have much chance to properly try out the camera or speakers in any meaningful way, but quick tests showed them to be no cause for concern.

Conclusion

Again, I must stress this is mini-review only, and I lacked enough time to properly test things like the camera, using Android apps, and many other consumer-facing apps, features and integrations. However, as a business tool and a natural successor to the Bold and Curve ranges, I was pleased to see that the new BlackBerry OS 10 direction had not detracted too much from the origins of being a very efficient business tool, and whilst it is a little larger than previous models to accommodate a bigger screen, I could definitely use it day-to-day at work. It's great to see a manufacturer put some decent specs behind a handset with physical qwerty keyboard, but I'd still prefer it with Android or even iOS if I were to have the handset for personal use as opposed to work use.

Same Phone, Same Build, 4 Months!

Something strange has happened!

Since 2009 I'd fallen into the habit of change with mobile phones. The materialisation of good value "pay as you go" deals rivalling "pre-pay" monthly contracts meant it became truly feasible to drop out of the 12, then 18 and even 24 month tie-in to one mobile network and a single device. Sure you could buy a SIM free device even if you were mid-contract, but your monthly payment was still paying for your contracted device, because it was subsidised, not "free". That meant buying a new device mid-contract was an extravagance, but once you drop into "pay as you go", you free up the subsidy portion of your monthly payment to spend on devices.

This led to a rapid turnover of devices, driven I think by four factors:

• Each device turned out to have a significant deal breaker
• The grass was greener; there was a better/faster device, gadget lust took over
• The grass was different; there were major new features or new form factors in the market
• I could turnover devices quickly outside of pre-pay contracts

This sent me through Symbian, Android, Windows Phone 7, even WebOS; you can see my personal device history over here. Throughout that time I didn't stay on the same device for more than a couple of months, three at the absolute maximum. Whist I may have not purchased a new device every couple of months, I ended up changing my SIM card between devices in my possession for a few weeks at a time. More than that, some devices (for example the Motorola Defy, Sony Xperia Ray, Samsung Nexus S) were customisable enough that I went through multiple operating system builds as well. Non-Nexus Android devices in particular can change dramatically when moved form the manufacturer's build of Android to something built by the community, either direct from CyanogenMod or from the very talented folk hanging out in the XDA forum.

This was all great fun, but skip forward to the present day and I'm writing this post having had my SIM card in the same phone with the manufacturer's build for well over 4 months. The Motorola RAZR i. Is it some kind of amazing super phone. No. Is it the manufacturer's amazing implementation of Android. No. So why have I settled after all that previous fluidity? Going back to the reasons I kept swapping in the first place:

• The deal breakers - For me, this device has none. Past deal breakers have included poor battery life, poor camera or no camera flash, device too big, device's core hardware going out of date leading to latest versions of operating system running like a dog, and end of support for the device both from the manufacturer and the community. I can't leave this section without calling out Motorola's use of an Intel chip in the RAZR i, as opposed to ARM chips in 99% of other Android phones. There are still some apps which don't work, most high profile in the UK is iPlayer (if you really want to watch TV on a phone). There are zero apps which I use that don't work however, so no deal breaker for me personally, but maybe for others.

• The grass is greener - I haven't seen any device released since the RAZR i which would tempt me, even with an unlimited budget. This is mainly due to my personal preference for "phone-sized" phones, and with flagship devices from HTC, Samsung, Sony et al arriving with 4.5" to 5" screens, I am simply not interested. Anything in the manufacturers' line ups below this screen size seems to have been relegated to mid-tier, as if the size of a screen is directly correlated to how good a phone should be. This means there is very little in my size range with specs worth getting out of bed for! This is subjective I know, however, Motorola did a great job of packing a large screen in such a small case. Ideally I'd still have the RAZR i made slightly smaller, but it comes just about inside my tolerance for size! The grass is greener argument has also faded away in terms of operating system build. I still run CyanogenMod on a few low-end devices which use exclusively for the gym or mountain biking, and they continue to do an amazing job, but the days of having the time or inclination for fiddling with custom recoveries and ROM installations are waning. Do I wish Motorola had been much quicker getting the latest version of Android out for the RAZR i, of course! However, the only thing I'm truly pining for from Jelly Bean is Google Now. The rest is minor tweaks or background "under the hood" improvements.

• The Grass is different - This goes in some ways hand in hand with a previous post about form factor monotony. Referencing just the Android world, we've seen that there has been nothing but rectangular slabs for well over a year now, and innovation with form factor has simply died off. Nokia's industrial design for the Lumia range, previewed with the N9, was a nice slant but ultimately the same. HTC's efforts with the recently announced One are also to be commended, if only for putting the speakers on the front of the device and not the back, but again still a rectangular slab. Physical keyboards appear to be out for good, as do sliding and flipping form factors. With this kind of stagnation in hardware design there is simply far less chance of seeing any different grass.

• Because I could - This one actually hasn't changed. I'm still "off contract" and have the option of selling the RAZR i at any time and using that money to buy the latest and greatest, but the the previous three points explain why I haven't!

Does this mean the RAZR i is the greatest phone since sliced bread? I suspect many, it not all, would argue against it, but it is pretty close for me, and that's why it has been with me for over 4 months, unheard of in the my recent phone geek history. The scary part is that I may be on the RAZR i for some time to come, unless one of the manufacturers decides to break rank and release, shock horror, a flagship-spec phone-sized phone. I can dream...

Form Factor Monotony

I had to add an extra label for this post; rant. The title above, form factor monotony, should say it all really, but here's some detail.

From the detailed list of Android phones available here in the UK you will see that the last device to not be a touch-only boring rectangle slab was the Motorola Pro Plus in December 2011. Simply put, every single Android phone released in the UK in the last 12 months has been pretty much the same. Maybe that's not fair, there are slight differences in curves around the edges, bezels sizes, materials and colours for example. The basic design of each is the same though; big slab, big pane of glass, increasingly less buttons for things like "home" or the camera shutter and maybe a flap for micro USB or SIM cards.

It's so incredibly boring!

Take a look down the history of Symbian phones. There's some serious variety in there, from phones that twist, flip, slide, have full keyboards, T9 keyboards, the list goes on. There was some serious creativity in there, mostly from Nokia of course being Symbian phones, but this is the best example of a seemingly forgotten art of making something tangibly different, whose physical attributes set it apart 

iPhone hardware is of course very similar through generations too, highly unsurprising given Apple's strategy to keep things simple, and allowing users to upgrade from one iPhone generation to the next without large scale changes and without the need to learn anything new around the hardware. Also different here is Apple controlling the entire device ecosystem, from hardware through operating system to the core software and apps, resulting in a much more uniform experience, which for the most part is a good thing for the average non-geek user.

Windows Phone seems to be following the same path as Android in terms of hardware variety, albeit a year or two behind, much like the operating system itself! The first generation of devices, introduced late 2010, included some small difference in form factors, and we had phones with keyboards, although they all seemed to be sliders and the candy bar qwerty arrangement wasn't taken on by any of the Windows Phone manufacturers. Come late 2012 and Windows Phone 8 hardware has converged on the same touch-only rectangle slab arrangement, from all the manufacturers. Samsung have at least kept a small amount of variety by sticking with a physical Windows button!

RIM's plans for BlackBerry 10 include touch-only and keyboarded devices at least, but with a large cloud surrounding the company's long term future and ability to execute the plan next year, they don't seem too relevant for this current snapshot.

This isn't the only trend in the smartphone hardware world of course. Sealed batteries are close to becoming standard and micro SD card slots are going the way of the Dodo, a trend which could arguably be traced back to Apple's introduction of the iPhone range. There are exceptions, and right up to its latest flagship the Galaxy S III, Samsung was bucking this trend and included both a changeable battery and a micro SD card slot. The days of these features seem numbered though, much like the reducing trend for camera shutter buttons, and the complete lack of a xenon flash equipped camera for a year or two across any of the ecosystems. Personally I can live with sealed batteries, but the SD card slot and shutter button are still big deals for me, but I must be in a diminishing minority.

We've seen that most smartphones are converging to touch-only hardware, with a button or two for power and a home function if you're lucky, and a volume rocker. One can only presume that this is due to the powers of supply and demand. Android and Window Phone phones had some variety in their early days, but with this fizzling out it, one logical train of thought is that the non-slab phones simply did not sell enough for manufacturers to bother making them again; why would you if they lost you money last time around because nobody bought them!? Maybe the extra complexity of non-slab phones and potentially large premium in build cost means they have to sell them at higher prices, which again would decrease demand. Or they're sold at lower margins, meaning the manufacturers, retailers and carriers alike would all see less profit on these devices, and their days would be numbered.

I don't blame the manufacturers, retailers or carriers for not continuing with devices which don't sell or don't make them enough money to bother, that's just life selling in a free (ish) marketplace. It does however make life for the smartphone enthusiast very dull. In recent episodes of both The Verge Mobile Show and The Phones Show Chat the presenters have bemoaned the lack of interesting devices, and alluded to a perceived plateau or technology and specifications within the smartphone space (although in fairness Chris Ziegler was rather shot down for his explanation of this, though he stuck to his guns!)

I've found myself agreeing with these guys; an industry which was once really interesting is starting to decline in variety. We still have 3 or 4 platforms to keep us interested on the software front, but hardware is becoming more of a commodity (it's not there yet) which is a real shame, and it seems that whilst I once changed phones every few weeks that is starting to drop to every few months, or more.

Nokia N9 Review

With thanks once again to Steve and Tim from Phones Show Chat, I've been fortunate enough to spend a couple of weeks in the company of the Nokia N9. This device is on loan from the owner as opposed to a PR company for example, and as such had to be treated with a little more care than the average phone I buy myself or a typical review unit. The first challenge came in the size of the SIM card, and having not used a device requiring a micro SIM before, a trip to my local Three store was in order to pick one up.

To set the scene a little history is useful. MeeGo, an operating system collaboration between Nokia and Intel, was announced at Mobile World Congress in February 2010. It was to be a mashup of Nokia's Maemo operating system and Intel's Moblin operating system. February 2011 and with Stephen Elop at the helm, Nokia famously ditched both MeeGo and Symbian from their long-term strategy, and instead choose to partner with Microsoft and Windows Phone became their platform of choice going forward. In a leaked memo to Nokia employees, Elop said: "We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market."

Despite MeeGo being dropped from the company's new smartphone strategy, on 21st June 2011 Nokia announced the N9, 16 months after the Nokia/Intel collaborative operating system was announced. Bringing Nokia and Intel's resources together to work on MeeGo was seemingly a complex operation, the fruits of which were taking too long for Elop to consider it as a viable contender going forward. It was therefore questioned why Nokia released the N9 at all, as the present incarnation of the operating system had no future, and rumour of the same physical chassis design being used for Nokia's Windows Phones turned out to be correct. The N9 started shipping in September 2011 to a select group of countries which did not include USA, UK or India, and Nokia's N9 availability page confirms that the device never officially made it to these countries.

Hardware

The N9 press release referred to "hardware and software (that) were jointly designed to ensure that they fit together seamlessly", and they certainly did a good job here. A year after the device's launch and we know the same deign was successfully re-used in Nokia's Lumia line of Windows Phones and won a good share of design prizes. The phone's chassis is milled out from a single piece of polycarbonate, with curved glass across the front which flows nicely in to the curves of the handset. It feels very nice and surprisingly small in the hand, as the 3.9 inch screen is surrounded on the sides by very little in the way of bezel. There are no front facing buttons, and simply a power/lock button and volume rocker on the right hand side. The bottom edge is perfectly flat, such that the device stands upright with no support, and here you'll also find the speaker.

The top edge is also perfectly flat, meaning the N9 also does great headstands! Here you'll find the 3.5mm headphone socket along with an ingenious flap and slot mechanism, to hide first the micro USB port for charging and data, and second the micro SIM tray.

The glass front protects a front-facing camera in the bottom right and a white notification light in the bottom left corner. The screen is AMOLED and includes Nokia's ClearBlack Display technology, a pair of polarizing filters which combine to gives better viewing angles and greater visibility in sunlight. At the rear you'll find an 8 mega-pixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash, and the camera glass is very slightly recessed, maybe half a millimetre or so, from the rest of the chassis, presumably to stop it getting scratched when the phone flat on its back.

The N9 weighs in at 135g, the same as a Galaxy Nexus but heavier than the iPhone 5, but feels very solid due to the single piece chassis design. I haven't dropped it (yet) but I'm very confident it would survive most day to day falls from tables, pockets and armchairs!

The usual hardware specs aren't going to mean a huge amount without lots of other MeeGo phones to compare against, but for completeness we have a Cortex A8 clocked at 1GHz, a dedicated GPU, and 1GB of RAM. The battery capacity is 1450 mAh, and I never ran out of juice during a full day, so clearly a lot more power efficient than your average Android device!

Operating System


The Nokia N9 is a MeeGo based device, but the user interface layer is referred to as part of the operating system itself, as the device's "About" screen states, this isn't just MeeGo, it is MeeGo Harmattan. Named after a West African trade wind, Harmattan refers to the swipe-based user interface on top of MeeGo, and is very different to most other mobile interfaces.

Three areas are presented in Harmattan: events, applications and open applications. Each is a whole-screen view which scrolls vertically to show more content. To move between each view a swipe from the left or right edge of the screen to the other is needed, similar to swiping horizontally between homescreens in Android for example. The swiping wraps around, so swiping continually from one side to the other will move you in a loop through the three views. As you'd expect, the events view gives you notifications like meetings, incoming messages, missed calls, and feeds from social networks. Applications view is a very colourful and visually pleasing grid of icons used for launching apps, and all currently running apps can be found in the third view called, you guessed it, open applications. In open applications view, apps are represented by live views of the apps themselves in a 4 by 4 grid view, and pressing and holding brings up the option to close one or all of your running apps.

Left to right: "Events" view, "Applications" view and "Open Applications" view

The swiping doesn't stop there though. From any app you can swipe edge to edge horizontally to take you back to where you came from. Sounds odd? Well, if you came into the app from the applications view, it will take you back there. If you came into the app from the events view, it will take you back there. After half an hour of using the N9 it becomes second nature and very intuitive, and I've since been doing the same swiping motion on my Nexus S somewhat amusingly. A full swipe upwards from the bottom edge does the same and returns you to where you were before you opened the app. 

Whilst in an app you can swipe from the top edge downwards to close the app altogether, which is even more amusing for previous Android users who are used to doing this motion to see the notification drawer, and I did initially close a few apps by mistake in the first hour or two! The final swiping gesture whilst in an app is upwards from the bottom edge, but instead of a full swipe, a small swipe/flick to anywhere around the half way mark dims the app and pops up a drawer of 4 icons for your most commonly used apps, which is very useful to quickly get to the camera for example.

Quick access to 4 of your most commonly used apps with a small swipe upwards

There's more swiping in the lock screen too: a full swipe vertically or horizontally from either direction will unlock the phone (or bring up the passcode screen if you have chosen to enable it), and the half swipe upwards to show the drawer with 4 app icons also works from the lock screen. Again, if you have passcode lock enabled these apps can only be launched once the passcode is entered. After a few seconds the lock screen times out to the standby screen, which by default shows the time and notification icons. I've also got the weather courtesy of the MeeCast app. Interestingly you can wake from standby with the expected press of the power/lock button, but also by double tapping the screen!

Lock screen

By now you're probably getting the message, lots of swiping! Writing all of these gestures, and subsequently reading them, or even explaining them to someone vocally seems long winded, but the reality of using the device day-to-day is that it all becomes second nature very quickly. Returning to other mobile operating systems such as my usual Android and employer-provided Blackberry seem very old and unintuitive in comparison, and flicking and swiping away at the screen to get things done in MeeGo Harmattan is genuinely a joy.

Delving further into the operating system we find there are references to other platforms: tapping the status bar at the top of the screen reveals controls to switch notification sound profiles, between ringing, quiet beeps and silent, along with a volume slider control and shortcuts to WiFi and Bluetooth settings, the like of which we've in some incarnations of Android-based devices. Pressing and holding an icon in applications view gives you the opportunity to move your icons, create folders and uninstall apps, reminiscent of iOS. There is an "accounts" area, where anything from Google, Dropbox, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook to name a few can be configured to feed the single events view (as well as feeding other things like contacts, sharing services, etc), similar to WebOS.

Left to right: Status bar drop-down, Accounts app, moving application icons

There is now certain amount of uncertainty over future development of MeeGo Harmattan though. There have been 4 releases since September 2011, and whilst N9 owners rejoiced when the latest version dropped, PR1.3 in July 2012, it was a bittersweet moment as the Maemo team also departed the same month.

Apps

Despite MeeGo Harmattan currently having no viable future at Nokia, the app situation isn't as bad as one might expect. Of the "core" apps I personally expect/need from a smartphone in 2012 I've only hit two big stumbling blocks so far. For the following there are good quality apps from either the service themselves or 3rd party developed apps:

Twitter, Dropbox, Sports Tracker (GPS tracking/stats for running/cycling), FotoShareN9 (to instantly upload photos to the cloud for safe keeping, Google Latitude, Podcatching, Last.FM Scrobbling, Weather, Barcode Scanner (barcodes and QR codes), Google Reader, Google Drive, LinkedIn, Kindle...

You also get Nokia's excellent maps and turn-by-turn satellite navigation, all free out of the box, with downloadable country/state maps. The two stumbling blocks for me were Evernote, where EverN9 exists but is broken and has been discontinued by the developer so a fix is unlikely, and Sonos. With apps for those two I could call it 100% for me, although everyone's mileage may vary, and you may find another app/service that isn't catered for. The chances may be slim though, as there is a very active and friendly community around the N9. Unsurprisingly there are a lot of people who tried/bought the device and loved it, and wanted to get the best experience possible. So you'll find loads of helpful forums, great contacts on Twitter, and lots of 3rd party developed apps for MeeGo Harmattan and the N9. With some caveats, you can even run Android apps thanks to some insanely clever folk! If you pick one of these up I'd recommend the following sites: Talk Maemo, Everything N9, My MeeGo. Also follow these guys on Twitter: @everythingn9, @MFaroTusino, @andyhagon, @stephenquin58.

Camera

As previously mentioned the N9 has an 8 mega-pixel camera, with Carl Zeiss optics (a wide 28mm lens with f/2.2 aperture) and dual LED flash. The video recording mode goes to 720p at 30fps, which has become a baseline standard to smartphones in 2012. Both performed very well; sample shots below.





Conclusion

Sadly, the N9 is ultimately a frustrating device. And its not even the N9's fault, it's Nokia's. What we have here is a new user interface paradigm which is graceful, intuitive, smart and different to pretty much everything else out there. Outside the operating system and user interface, we have beautiful award winning hardware, a terrific camera and a great screen. The curved glass and rounded edges of the device match perfectly with the swiping gestures in MeeGo Harmattan; it is obvious that it truly was "hardware and software (that) were jointly designed to ensure that they fit together seamlessly", to quote the N9 press release. The frustration is that Nokia jumped the MeeGo Harmattan ship, before the N9 had even been announced to the world. PR1.3 may be the last update to the operating system, and whilst the MeeGo and N9 community is incredibly strong, it is only a matter of time before it starts to diminish. Or is it?

Jolla is a company founded by the ex-MeeGo developers of Nokia, and aims to continue working on MeeGo from the state Nokia left it in when the Maemo team was disbanded. Codenamed Sailfish, Jolla's mobile operating system will have bases in Mer and Qt, and their plan is for the product to be used in smartphones, tablets and many other devices. Whilst this isn't MeeGo Harmattan by name, it is by its roots and by the people working to bring it to life. Fingers crossed we get another viable and long-term mobile platform from these guys.

Sources: Nokia, Taskumuro, Engadget, The Verge, My Nokia Blog