subway: October 2006 archives
Ding-a-Ling
[ rakaur on Mon Oct 16 at 10:01 PM // category: eastgate, hardware, subway, technology, work ]
So, Helio is pretty awesome.
I’ve been taking full advantage of the unlimited data. I use it to check sports scores (go Cards!), send tons of SMS and MMS, upload photos to Facebook, etc. The service is great, and the phone calls actually sound pretty good, which is high praise coming from me (I think all phones sound like varying degrees of shit). The Internet is fast when on Sprint’s 1xEV-DO, and really, really, just terribly and utterly mind-blowingly slow when on Verizon’s 1xRTT network. It was a nice feature after having used Sprint’s Vision service.
The phone itself, the VK650C, or Kickflip, is pretty sweet. The interface is beautiful, and just as polished as the phone itself (which is more than I can say for the RAZR and friends). It has a two megapixel camera, which I paid $250 for three years ago. Of course, the opening device is also cool.
Alas, this would not be written by me if it didn’t contain complaining somewhere. The phone has its quirks, which is disappointing because I have the second rev, and I would have thought they would have had to time work this stuff out. The internal photo album gets corrupted from time to time. It’ll list one picture under one name, but when I try to MMS it to someone it’ll send a different picture. I have to go in through the PC software and reset the memory. The camera takes pretty good pictures outside, or where there is a lot of light, and it takes really, really shitty pictures otherwise. The “flash” is just a light that shines for a little while, which is pretty crappy. There are also various bugs in the software that are just enough to irk you. I also loathe the fact that I can’t add words to T9. Obviously, none of these are deal breakers.
Being that it uses Sprint’s and Verizon’s network, I tend to have coverage everywhere. My old Sprint phone barely held onto a signal in my basement, and I have 4/5 bars on the Kickflip right now. I’ve also been told that the phone itself has a fantastic antenna. In fact, the only place I don’t get service is in the storm shelter basements in the buildings at my school. Unfortunately, I’m subject to the same retardedness that I got from Sprint. Things like getting voicemails from people that my phone never rang for, or getting voicemails two days after they’re left.
So far, I’ve dropped it twice. Once onto grass in my backyard from about three feet up, and it flipped open and got some dirt on it, but that was it. I stopped carrying it in my hoodie pocket after that. The other time was out of my pants pocket from about a foot up (I was sitting in a theater chair) onto carpet, and that somehow managed to make the battery fly six feet away. It’s still undamaged, and unscratched. I need to buy a case to keep it that way.
The PC sync software is… shitty. I was disappointed to find that it requires special software to do things. The software isn’t all that terrible, but I’d prefer something standard. The phone also has media playback, but I haven’t tried it out since I just use my iPod. If I could purchase a sufficiently large transflash card for a sufficiently low amount of money, it might be worth it, but otherwise my iPod wins. The headphones that came with it were apparently designed for elephants, because I’ll be damned if I can fit the things in my ear.
Anyway, it’s cool, check it out. Be sure to use me as a reference if you decide to sign up!
On another note, I got fired from Subway. There’s a guy there that talks about how attractive the younger girls are, and he’s like 45. I was joking with one of the girls there, and said “oh yeah, he’s kind of a pedophile.” Well, someone heard me, and told him. He didn’t care; he knew I was joking. He told the manager, and he fired me.
Kind of sucks. Now I’m back at hellho—Eastgate until I can find a better job, again.
-- rakaur // 2006.10.16 @ 10:01 PM
