SilverWav's Journal

The Nokia Lumia 900 review

Its really weird, most of the reviews seem to be in the line of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

I cant work out if this is just the result of “Group Think”, or if the reviewers are aware that outright criticism of MS/Nokia is not allowed and dance around giving the reader hints instead.

Also this review is interesting because after reading it my takeaway was:

A really Ugly, under spec’d, Low Res., Square phone, For too much money …

Now the ugly is personal preference, but something I would stand by, this thing is ugly.

Now the under spec’d, Low Res is born out if you research the phone and I think the reviewer does touch on this but again this odd reticence to take MS/Nokia to task for it.

Notes:

It feels bigger in hand than you might expect.

“Due to the screen margins and casing overhang it feels bigger in hand than
you might expect of a 4.3-inch-screened phone. “

Its Fat.

“The Lumia 900 is not pushing the limits of thinness at 11.5
millimeters”

The Galaxy Note is 9.7 mm and the iPhone 9.3 mm

It can be hard to hear.

“The Lumia 900′s single speaker is pretty quiet, even at the loudest volume
setting. [...] but it can be hard to hear without the volume turned all the way
up. “

As for storage, [...]16GB—unexpandable.

As for storage, the Lumia 900 comes with a flat 16GB—unexpandable,
unupgradeable.

The Lumia 900′s screen is 800×480 pixels.

In 2012???

Really?

What is this the Windows95 Phone?

It gets Dirty real fast.

“the Lumia 900′s screen holds onto grease and fingerprints like
crazy.”

“Fingerprint grease slicks can accumulate to the point that light coming
from the screen underneath strobes. The grease buildup gets so rich and
plentiful, you could identify a murder suspect from these fingerprint
impressions”

Landscape orientation sometimes seems half-baked.

“with buttons that stay portrait-oriented next to the horizontal keyboard.
The phone is also a bit finicky about scrolling. “

Ouch – I mean that is pretty basic!

Windows Phone notifications are poor.

The reviewer dances around this but does say:

“the OS needs to play catchup in other notification measures.”

The browser is, unfortunately, one of the phone’s weaker points.

Yes if you look at the screen shots its pretty nasty.

And slow:

“over three times slower than the iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus”

Too much swiping – too little info per page.

“Often apps split too much between too many menus, requiring several swipes
to access all of the options. In other cases, the large fonts that characterize
the OS take up too much valuable screen real estate.”

This is a conscious design decision and a bad one.

No replaceable Battery & recharge takes approx 4 hours.

This is a deal breaker for me what use is a phone that I cant use?

What’s new in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin beta 2 since beta 1

Unity (both 2D and 3D) gained an option to configure the launcher for multi-monitor setups: you can now select to display the launcher on the primary monitor or on all monitors. The Launcher behaviour for multi-monitor setups can be set from System Settings (Displays, under Launcher Placement). Under System Settings, you can now also enable/disable Sticky Edges:

Via: webupd8.org

An example: Tab Utilities 1.1.3.

Some of the compatibilities reports say it is OK….

But how do I test it if its marked non-compatible?

Add-on Compatibility Reporter no longer allows the user to force compatibility.

Oh. Dear. Me.

This sound just like the bad old days :-(

Here is the fix:
extensions.checkCompatibility.12.0 = false
extensions.checkCompatibility.12.0a = false
extensions.checkCompatibility = false

I had uninstalled it and previously the site would not allow me to reinstall.

After the addition of the preferences above I was allowed to install and all looks OK so far.

LibreOffice, Really?! Really?!

How come I have never seen this issue?

Oh yeah with Ubuntu libreoffice is pre-installed…

On windows you use http://ninite.com/

Specifically: http://ninite.com/java-libreoffice/

I mean who does all that stupid windows installer “visit the homepage of all the apps” rubbish any more?!

Come on!

:-)

I was experiencing issues when playing video with Movie Player and mplayer.

I initially thought it was caused by pulseaudio but traced it down to Firefox and npviewer.bin usage.

If I kill npviewer.bin the sound works.

Will look for a bug to report it under.

—

[link]

Boot-Repair

Warning!

I have not tested this yet :-)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install boot-repair

________________________________________

via webupd8.

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:

ATA device, with non-removable media
	Model Number:       WDC WD5000AAKS-22TMA0                   
	Serial Number:      WD-WCAPW2780866
	Firmware Revision:  12.01C01
Standards:
	Supported: 7 6 5 4 
	Likely used: 8
Configuration:
	Logical		max	current
	cylinders	16383	16383
	heads		16	16
	sectors/track	63	63
	--
	CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
	LBA    user addressable sectors:  268435455
	LBA48  user addressable sectors:  976773168
	Logical/Physical Sector size:           512 bytes
	device size with M = 1024*1024:      476940 MBytes
	device size with M = 1000*1000:      500107 MBytes (500 GB)
	cache/buffer size  = 16384 KBytes
Capabilities:
	LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
	Queue depth: 32
	Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
	R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16	Current = 16
	Recommended acoustic management value: 128, current value: 254
	DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 
	     Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
	PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
	     Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
	Enabled	Supported:
	   *	SMART feature set
	    	Security Mode feature set
	   *	Power Management feature set
	   *	Write cache
	   *	Look-ahead
	   *	Host Protected Area feature set
	   *	WRITE_BUFFER command
	   *	READ_BUFFER command
	   *	NOP cmd
	   *	DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
	    	Power-Up In Standby feature set
	   *	SET_FEATURES required to spinup after power up
	    	SET_MAX security extension
	    	Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
	   *	48-bit Address feature set
	   *	Device Configuration Overlay feature set
	   *	Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
	   *	FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
	   *	SMART error logging
	   *	SMART self-test
	   *	General Purpose Logging feature set
	   *	64-bit World wide name
	   *	Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
	   *	Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
	   *	Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
	   *	Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
	   *	Host-initiated interface power management
	   *	Phy event counters
	   *	DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
	   *	Software settings preservation
	   *	SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
	   *	SCT Long Sector Access (AC1)
	   *	SCT LBA Segment Access (AC2)
	   *	SCT Error Recovery Control (AC3)
	   *	SCT Features Control (AC4)
	   *	SCT Data Tables (AC5)
	    	unknown 206[12] (vendor specific)
	    	unknown 206[13] (vendor specific)
Security: 
	Master password revision code = 65534
		supported
	not	enabled
	not	locked
	not	frozen
	not	expired: security count
	not	supported: enhanced erase
	128min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 50014ee100313fda
	NAA		: 5
	IEEE OUI	: 0014ee
	Unique ID	: 100313fda
Checksum: correct

[Update]Note: I’m going with ClipIt in place of Parcellite.

sudo apt-get install parcellite

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Press Alt + F2 and type ‘dconf-editor’ go to:

com.canonical.Unity.Panel

Change:

systray-whitelist

Add:

, 'parcellite'

Log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

Update:

Click on the clock and choose “Time & Date Settings” → “Clock”.

Thanks to Matthew Paul Thomas for the comment.

___

Old:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Press Alt + F2 and type 'dconf-editor'.

com.canonical.indicator.datetime

show-day
show-date
show-locations