Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mobile

cell phone networks

jtexman1 — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:32:57 -0800

Does any cell phone network engineer perhaps know why you can't hear your own voice when speaking on a cell? I have noticed that when I speak on a landline, I can hear my own voice attenuated in the receiver. It helps in monitoring one's speaking volume. That doesn't seem to happen on a cell. I can't hear my own voice in the receiver and therefore frequently end up yelling or speaking more loudly than I would normally.
Does anyone know why this is the case? And is there a fix to it? Something the carriers might do?

Jumping ship to Android (Google's S4) and need a Mailbox equivalent

0bvious — Sat, 18 May 2013 09:25:26 -0800

I think the time has come for me to jump the iPhone ship. The announcement of the Google version of the Galaxy S4 at I/O was the clincher. But I am not 100% sold on the idea, mainly because the S4 is an ugly brute, but also because I fear for the apps and innovation I will miss. Help me out, specifically in finding a worthy replacement for my beloved Mailbox app. I waited. I pondered. I looked longingly at the horizon. Now it's time to go.

I am a concerned jumper for a few reasons:

1. I use an ipad extensively, and don't see this changing anytime soon. Iphone/Ipad integration is pretty solid.
2. My girlfriend and close friends will be sticking with Apple and iMessage will be missed
3. I recently started using Mailbox app and it has revolutionised the way I use email. I don't think I can go back to the old cluttered inbox, BUT, Mailbox's plans to make an app for Android look vague at best.
4. Related to this, it seems that the Apple app store is still the top of the list for developers, even though there are now more Android devices out there than Apple. I like innovation. Will I have to wait around a lot?

I am jumping because I am sick of having to jailbreak my phone to have it do what I want. I am a heavy HEAVY mobile internet user, I use a lot of apps for a variety of things. I reckon most can be replaced, and fed into Dropbox or something to take the place of iCloud, BUT, I'm not sure, and I am worried that once I jump I'll be stranded.

I really wanted Google to announce a new Nexus at I/O this week, but they failed. The current Nexus 4 looks lovely, but the lack of 4G put me off. The HTC One also is a sweet looking device, but with only 4MP of camera to play with it would've felt like a downgrade. Google announced a new partnership with the S4 at I/O, so I am hoping to get one now, and root it when the Google rich version gets released in June.

My contract has been up for renewal since February, so I have already lingered long enough. The battery in my trusty iPhone 4 is pretty crap these days. Time to move on. Please help me out here.

Simplest mobile phone for use in Europe, USA, and Australia?

Philosopher Dirtbike — Sat, 18 May 2013 03:53:40 -0800

I currently have a Samsung Guru E1081T. It is a very simple phone, and I can use it in Australia and Europe. However, it does not work in the USA. What is the simplest phone that uses SIM cards that I can use in all three places? No smartphones please; battery life is the paramount consideration. I don't care about features, apart from phone and texting.

Best tablet and workflow for blogging

melissa — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:57:44 -0800

I would like to purchase a tablet so I can do more blogging without lugging a laptop around. What are the best tools/apps/workflow tips to be able to do this without tearing my hair out? Special snowflake stuff inside. Here are my snowflakey specs:

I blog using self-hosted Wordpress, and I can do basic maintenance on it myself.
I already have a Bluetooth keyboard I like, and that works with both iOS and Android.
I currently have an iPhone 4S and my husband has a Nexus 7 tablet I can experiment on.
I'm leaning towards an Android tablet because there are more options at various price points (read: cheaper).
A 7 inch tablet is ideal - will fit in my purse with the keyboard and all my other purse stuff.
I would love to be able to insert Flickr/Instagram pictures easily, but the more I search, the more I see that this isn't really done outside of the iPad-only Blogsy app. That app looks like what I'd like to use, but I can't justify spending so much more on an iPad (with all new connectors/accessories) on the basis of one app that may or may not stick around.
I am reasonably comfortable with HTML. I just think it's ridiculously difficult to insert Flickr images into the WordPress mobile app.
I have and use both Dropbox and Evernote. I know that Evernote works in rich text and can cause unusual formatting when exporting to Wordpress. Should I consider a plain text editor and work in Markdown? (I've never worked that way before, but it looks easy to learn.)
I have no problem paying for apps if they're worth the money.
Outside of blogging, I would be using this tablet mostly for various social media (Twitter/FB/Pinterest) as well as reading web stuff from Pocket and ebooks via Kobo/my local library. I'm not a big gamer, but I'd probably watch occasional videos on it too
I'm in Canada if that affects any tools/toys I can purchase.
I'm willing to wait if the Next Big Thing is worth it. (I need to save my pennies too!)

How do you make blogging on a tablet work for you? What's your workflow? Thanks!

I need to buy a phone in the US for somebody else to use in Mexico.

jeoc — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:46:43 -0800

My mom moved to Mexico recently, and I have had a hard time contacting her via phone. She's staying with relatives of her boyfriend, but it seems like she's not able to use their phone to make international calls. I'd like to get her a mobile phone that she can use to call me and her other kids (or anybody else), but I'm a bit overwhelmed by what I'm finding with google - a lot of which seems targeted to making international calls from the US to other countries or just seems spammy. What is a good way to buy a phone here and send it to Mexico? I'm having a bit of a hard time contacting my mom via phone since she moved (about a month ago), and I'd like to make it easier to contact her. I rather send a phone than a phone card, because I'd like it to be her phone.

Ideally I'd like a pay-as-you-go phone that I could buy top-up cards for and keep her stocked in minutes. I'm not sure she's in a position to get a local sim card and put it in a phone, so I'd rather send something that is ready to go. I'd rather not spend a fortune, but it is important to me to get something that will work. What brands should I be looking for? Where should I buy this? I'm in the US, in North Carolina.

I'm worried she's in a bit of a bad situation. I'm in contact with her intermittently via email, and her last message was concerning. I tried calling her today, but haven't been able to reach her. I have been in email contact, but not phone contact since she moved (my fault - I didn't realize she wouldn't be able to call and I've been busy and distracted). She moved with her boyfriend, a Mexican national, to Mexico City about a month ago with the plan of moving to Merida about a month after arriving. They seemed to have a great relationship before the move. I can't tell if she's just having adjustment difficulties with the new place and the language barrier or if there is a real issue. I think it was not terribly smart of her to do this, particularly without a plan for how she would communicate with the states, but I'm trying NOT to panic here and focus on ways to figure out what is really going on and be genuinely helpful. My plan right now is to send emails and try to call every day and send her a phone.

X11 apps on Ubuntu Touch?

jaduncan — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:44:21 -0800

Ubuntu touch preview does not use X11 for graphics. The repository for armhf contains virtually all apps available in desktop Ubuntu, but they cannot be run directly on the tablet (Nexus 10 in my case). Is there a way to run those using a virtual X-server, perhaps passing through local VNC to be displayed? I have ssh access to the device, so I can run commands normally.

Cell phone options for a short trip to Canada

RedOrGreen — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:48:29 -0800

We're driving from NY to Montreal for a short 5-day trip, and we'll need to be able to make a few calls and/or send and receive texts while on the road. I've found a bunch of older answers to very similar questions (for example) but surely things are better by now? What are my cheap prepaid (I assume) options for a short trip to Canada? Is there a simple way to pick up a prepaid SIM card over the border and use it for the trip? We will have:
* Two unlocked GSM phones (Sony candy bars, originally from Australia), currently with T-Mobile pre-paid SIMs. It looks like they want 59 cents/min for international roaming, which may not be the worst option. But T-Mobile's website gets very confused when I try to sign up for International Roaming.
* An unlocked iPhone 4, currently on an AT&T GoPhone plan. Looks like they charge 39 cents/min to roam, but the whole plan/service situation is fragile and keeps breaking on me and I'd rather not mess with it if possible.
* A Google Voice number that I could redirect, if that's useful in Canada.
* A stand-alone GPS unit as well as a GPS app on an iPad, so I'm not too worried about maps. Data service might be nice if it worked with my iPhone but really not that important, since I expect to have wifi most of the time.

I'm not interested in signing up for a contract plan or changing our current service in the US. So it would probably be simplest if I could pick up a prepaid (e.g. Virgin Mobile or Vodafone) SIM, put some twenty bucks on it for basic calling and messaging, and put it in one of the candy bars. What say you, Canadian (or Canada-visiting) Mefites, eh?

Choose my phone!

elizamina — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:40:52 -0800

I'm tired of my cheap, app-less phone. It's time to upgrade to something nice. I'm looking at either an iPhone or a Samsung. Which should it be? And why? Sell me on the best phone!

Where Can I Learn About Mobile Software Development?

COD — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:30:49 -0800

I'm back in the web software development world after about 7 years selling already developed software. Mobile software development barely existed the last time I talked to a client about development projects. I understand the web side of things just fine still. Mobile I'm clueless on. Is there a good book or maybe website(s) that will help get me up to speed, and stay there? I'm running sales, so I'm not going to be writing any code. I actually can write small apps in python or php, and I know my way around the Wordpress codebase. So I'm not the stereotypical dumb sales guy. I mostly need to know what questions to ask when qualifying and sizing mobile projects. We develop for both Android and iOS.

Thanks.

Why do different phones / platforms respond differently to mobile sites?

lucullus — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:48:13 -0800

When businesses make mobile 'friendly' sites, is there a consistent rule of thumb for detecting mobile devices, and behaving appropriately? For example, I'm looking at one site on an iPhone and a Lumia 920 (Windows 8). On the former, it presents a much simpler site, clearly optimised for mobile use, and on the latter it just presents the usual site.

I'm aware there's some sharing of device information, and also aware that you can make a 'responsive' site which is smarter about how to behaves in different screen sizes, but I wondered if anyone could suggest why you might have a site which detects and deals with the iPhone but not the Lumia / Windows 8 ...

Google Calendar Alternative Needed

stoneweaver — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 12:44:40 -0800

I need to be able to sync at least two calendars between iOS and Android, and I don't want to use Google Calendar anymore. What should I use? For obvious reasons, I don't trust Google with my calendar anymore. I need an alternative that will instantaneously (or near it) sync two calendars - one on an iPhone and one on an Android. Bonus points given if I can import my current calendar into the new one, but this is not a mandatory feature. I would be willing to pay for this once, but not monthly. I would also like to be able to access the calendars from a browser. It's OK if it's one calendar, as long as things can be colored/tagged for different people/organizations. (Extra Bonus: It would be super lovely if it were a calendar that I could easily import to Wordpress, but this is more a dream than necessity.)

user-scalable=wrong

benzenedream — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:21:24 -0800

On Android, is there a way in any of the available browsers to turn off honoring <meta name = "viewport" content = "initial-scale = x.x, user-scalable = no">? I'm sick of designers that don't want me to zoom in on their preciously designed mobile site.

Interesting or innovative mobile app or game advertising/monetization?

specialk420 — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 08:49:09 -0800

Curious if the anyone has examples of interesting or innovative approaches to in app or in game (mobile especially) advertising, promotions etc which help developers monetize their freemium games or aoos? Casting the net pretty wide - things like: gummicube or Kiip?

How much do Android updates matter?

Foci for Analysis — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 05:04:39 -0800

People keep emphasizing that a major advantage of Nexus mobile phones is that Google will update them to the latest version of Android. But does it really make a huge difference going from a .x to .x+1 Android release when you have so many apps that can modify every aspect of your phone, not to mention what you can do with alternative firmware like CyanogenMod?

What's the best mobile internet setup?

zephyr_words — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:47:45 -0800

Is there any advantage to using a Verizon (or equivalent) 4G Hotspot over tethering a mobile phone? I have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and tether sometimes with PDANet+.

Starting next month I'll need to tether a lot. I was planning on upgrading my data plan and just tethering with my phone but I wanted to explore other options. I'm open to alternatives to Verizon as well.

1. Is there any advantage to using a dedicated hotspot device over tethering a 4G capable device?
2. What's the best setup if I need to use a lot of data?

Just looking for some mefites recent, relevant, personal experiences!

How do I stop a christian page in my facebook timeline?

dash_slot- — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:41:22 -0800

How do I stop a christian page in my facebook timeline? I could pick a different 'sponsored page' to give as an example, but this one annoys me because I am not christian [or religious at all].

So...like other flavours of religion, I guess, this is sub-optimal for me. I cannot see a button on my timeline, nor on their page 'https://www.facebook.com/gospelship', which says 'stop'. It has appeared three times now, and others also appear unbidden. Any ideas? Specifically or generally about them or others, would be useful.

Podcasts about trends in mobile

coffee and minarets — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:38:49 -0800

What are the best podcasts that focus on current and potential future trends in mobile (smartphones, tablets)?

I'm going to thailand. I bought a used ATT iPhone 3GS. Now what?

rileyray3000 — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:28:08 -0800

I'm heading to Bangkok in ten days for about two weeks. I looked into using my iPhone 5 overseas and the answers from ATT made me think twice about it. So for 100 bucks I bought a used Iphone 3GS. I figure I'd just buy a sim card there and I'd be all set. But then I thought I should check. Do I need to unlock it? or jailbreak it? Is there anything specific to Thailand and Iphones I need to know? What's the process here?

What was the name of that well-funded mobile app that flopped?

mark7570 — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 06:22:38 -0800

A year or two ago there was a heavily funded mobile startup out of Silicon Valley - I think it had $100 million or more in funding - that never quite got off the ground. I feel like it had a simple one-word name. Anyone remember?

For what purpose was enterprise push email designed?

aydeejones — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:01:31 -0800

Would you agree that enterprise push email technology was primarily designed to push email from a single enterprise mailbox (unless you happen to work for multiple enterprises)? At my place of employment we run Exchange and most folks with mobile devices have separate, dedicated "mobile mailboxes" that are dedicated to mobile use. They essentially use their devices as pagers. This is typical across the medical staff and prior to the push-email setup, the medical staff used alpha-pagers, so this is a logical continuation of that setup. They want to be woken up in the middle of the night if it's important, but they don't want every email flowing into their phone.

As of late, most new managers that start in the organization immediately request the ability to synchronize with their primary mailbox, often eschewing the use of a separate dedicated mailbox. Our sysadmin finds this unfathomable.

I would argue that this is the most common "use case" of enterprise push email: retrieving any message you wish, getting notified of new email messages in your single solitary mailbox. I think it's beyond debate and feel sheepish posting this, but it's hard to find supporting evidence of what I think is a pretty obvious conclusion: of course this is what BlackBerry Enterprise Server was designed to do, along with other technologies like Good and ActiveSync, and most users are interested in retrieving all of their corporate email. I personally do this, using rules to move the less-important email to other folders so I don't get notified when they arrive.

Our sysadmin is adamant that this is foolish, I suspect because he personally doesn't like this approach himself, and because "we've always done it the other way." These might be uncharitable interpretations but I just don't get it.

I think he's behind the times and he's literally accused me of "thinking I'm god" when I explained that this technology was really intended for syncing with a "primary mailbox" and not some extra dumping ground.

To be honest I want something to be able to point at, and I think the internet might benefit from this thread if future people in my role are forced to question their sanity about such a simple concept.

Where can I find market share for mobile phones and tablets?

kirkaracha — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:28:30 -0800

I need to find device-specific US market share for mobile phones and tablets. I can find plenty of info on mobile/tablet OS and browser market share, but I need % market share for Google Nexus, iPad Mini, etc.

Who Said It?

furtive — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:17:35 -0800

Paraphrased: "It's not that that half of your visitors will be on mobile devices, it's that all your visitors will be on mobile devices half the time." Who said it? I saw it on Twitter a few weeks ago and can't find it anywhere.

Powering a work environment from a bike dynamo?

jaduncan — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:59:59 -0800

I'll soon be off on a big bike tour, and would like reccomendations for running a computer/tablet able to do actual work from a bike dynamo hub (details inside). The work I will be doing is mainly word processing with internet research, and I am aiming to be able to charge the batteries of my device from the day's riding (as well as those of a Galaxy S III). My dynamo is a Shimano Alfine front hub limited to 6V 3W, and I'm considering the Tout Terrain Plug II to produce a reasonably steady USB 5v output.

My initial thoughts are to use an Alphasmart Neo II to draft things, and hook that up to a Nexus 7 with Ubuntu dual boot to finish. I'm very open to other suggestions for both components, and have been considering an OLPC but it appears to be very hard to get a modern model.

My requirements are these:

* Must be able to use Debian/Ubuntu, with chroot from Android acceptable if there's 2gb of memory as otherwise things lag.
* Enough power to be able to use Chrome for Google Docs/Drive.
* Ideally able to charge for 4-5 hours of work in a day's cycling.
* Reasonably robust, as I'll be camping almost every night and will at least occasionally be working under a tarp.

Any suggestions on how to do this are very gratefully received.

Help me choose a framework for my mobile app

dudeman — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:55:52 -0800

I want to build a mobile application (iOS + Android) that communicates with a server. It'll be a fairly simple application - fill out a form or two on the mobile device and post it, along with a photo and geolocation info, to a server. My background is in Java/J2EE and I'm looking to branch out into more modern technology. What frameworks / languages / technologies would you recommend I investigate? I'm building this application on a shoestring budget, so it has to be cheap and simple to build, host, and maintain. Eventually there will be a desktop-web-browser interface and possibly a user forum (such as phpBB) but that's not a day 1 requirement.

As I said above, I'm a Java/J2EE programmer by trade, I have decent experience with JavaScript and HTML coding.

I'm building this project both for its own sake and as an opportunity to learn more modern technologies. I'm not afraid to try something new. Some technologies I am looking at now:

PhoneGap
NoSQL DB (i.e. MongoDB)
Amazon hosting
FaceBook API integration

I expect that I would expose the interface to the back end as a set of web services, and invoke those services from PhoneGap.

Not sure what, if anything, I need between PhoneGap and the NoSQL DB on the back end?

I want to save this moment forever

decathecting — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:08:50 -0800

I'm looking for phone apps that will allow me to easily and simply record sound and simultaneously back up the recording offsite (send it to email, save to a cloud server, etc.). I want to be able to hit a button on my phone that will start recording and automatically save that recording somewhere other than (or in addition to) in my phone's memory. I realize that the quality of the recording will mostly depend on the physical capabilities of the phone, but I'd like the recording to be as high-quality as possible. And I'd love to make a list of apps available for a wide variety of phones. If there is some way to do this on non-smartphones (i.e., by saving the message to voicemail or something), that would also be awesome.

I know these sorts of apps exist, because I've heard of people using them to record encounters with police, fights with significant others, etc., in which their phones ended up lost or destroyed, but the recordings were still accessible to them later. You would think I'd easily be able to find this on Google, but either it is hard to find, or I am terrible at Google. Thanks for your help!