HTC Hero (Sprint) vs IPhone 3GS

After landing in the US at the end of September (2009), I have been waiting for October 11 in order to purchase an HTC Hero through Sprint. Yesterday I attempted to do this. This is how it went.

The Hero has 4 buttons and a central trackball/button on its front. These buttons are the current application menu button, the home screen button, the search window button, and the back button. The central ball is a track-pad like button.

The first task was to browse the net. I immediately attempted to open Google's search page. I clicked on the web and typed the address in.

Once Google's search results came in I attempted to zoom in. As a note zoom in isn't supported on mobile websites. I didn't know this. What came as a shock was that it allowed a kind of zoom out and then bounce back. This to me was unnatural, and made me think perhaps that my zoom in motion was wrong. If zoom isn't supported on a mobile site then disable zoom completely.

Google provides many results. I clicked the first. I then changed my mind and clicked the second but at this point the browser was busy and couldn't respond to my new choice. So it's still loading the first page and this is not going fast. The page loaded finally.

Once the page was open I had to scroll up and down to paginate. This didn't feel extremely smooth, but of course it worked. At this point I started to open new pages, and go back and forth. This was very confusing. I sometimes had to use the menu button, and sometimes had to use the back button. Not a very good experience. I couldn't figure out if there was a browser forward button.

I now want to navigate to a new page. How to get to an address bar. Not very intuitive. I figure it out using either the menu button, or perhaps the back button to start a new search.

Now I have to modify the text. If I want to just change a few letters of the text box then I have to navigate around the text box using the track-ball. Horrific! It doesn't allow a continuous motion, you must keep pushing it to move it a few spaces at a time. Big negative for functionality.

It's important to be able to use the landscape view while browsing. I tried this. I found it's response time for detecting landscape vs portrait position lagged quite a bit. Sometimes it didn't seem to figure it out at all.

I must've used the Hero for at least an hour in the Sprint store. I was very disappointed. It wasn't responsive, and it didn't have the uniformity in the UI that I expected. I walked away realizing that the HTC Hero isn't ready.

After this experience I went on to try out an IPhone 3GS.

The IPhone has a single menu button on its front. This button brings you to the main menu. All other functionality is provided via the application using the touchscreen. This enables each application to give you the exact buttons you need and only when you need them.

I started on the IPhone by browsing to Google. The IPhone immediately brings up an address bar and the favorites menu. I liked this very much since Google was one of the first pages listed. I click on Google. I do a search.

I test zoom in. Doesn't work. I test zoom out. Doesn't work. I guess the IPhone also doesn't support zoom on a mobile page. I'm happy to say that IPhone's response was uniform - both zoom in and zoom out do nothing.

I click on a result and then decide to click on another one. The IPhone has no problem with this and immediately begins loading the second link I clicked. The page is now loading and seems to come up pretty fast.

The page is up and I begin to paginate. Feels very responsive and smooth. Zooming works well too. Now I'm going to open a new page. There are a few ways to do this and they are all pretty natural. I scroll up to the top of the page and I have the address bar and the Google search box. I can both load a new page directly or start a new search. There are also 4 buttons that the IPhone puts at the bottom of the screen of the browser screen. Back and forth buttons, bookmarks, and a browser window select button. I love the back and forth as they work well and as one would expect. The window select button allows a new browser window to be created or deleted and allows you to choose which window to view. Very simple in its use.

I now want to put a new address in or perhaps modify the text. Very simple to understand. You can double click on the text and it selects it, a single click brings up a select all like menu. There are little notches that you can move around for selecting parts of words. This is simple. I start to modify the text and I can easily browse to a new page.

Portrait versus landscape view. The IPhone can also detect this and it does it seamlessly. There is an expected delay of about 1.5 seconds which is uniform all around.

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The IPhone made me very happy when compared with the Hero. A much more user friendly experience, higher performance and responsiveness, and overall a superior product.

There are a lot of advantages to buying an HTC Hero. It's run on an open source system, it enables you to use any application you want. Sprint will sell you full insurance for the Hero, while AT&T and Apple will not insure the IPhone. For me the decision was all about how it felt to use. Simply stated - the IPhone is a smoother more fun phone to use, albeit more expensive (both the purchase price, contract rates, and long-term usage due to application costs). Perhaps in a year there will be an Android powered phone with the power to unseat the IPhone, but it's definitely not the HTC Hero.

My experience using the HTC Hero is what so firmly convinced me to buy an IPhone. That said, everyone has their own taste, and my decision is based on what I need in a phone.

(I purposefully omitted a number of functions and abilities that were either explained to me in the Apple store or I discovered later. This is not a tutorial on use but rather a step-by-step history of my impressions of the two phones.)

Ortho K - No more glasses??

So there are many names for this which all mean the same thing. Contact lenses that you wear while you sleep which affect the shape of your cornea and give you back that great vision that you remember as a child. No surgery involved, but you must wear the lenses at night forever!!! I've been trying to find out where to get these lenses in Israel, and I have not yet succeeded. I believe Optic Halperin might have it at some as yet unknown location, and possibly some place called Optic Shavit or Shaviv in Givataim. It involves about a week to a month's worth of visits to the optometrist, and they have to give you different lenses each time until your eyes get stable, and then you stick with the same pair. You must clean the lenses properly since you won't notice if they're uncomfortable when you sleep and you could damage your eyes otherwise. Here's to the hope of finding a good place in Tel Aviv to do this for me, and to the hope of being able to see the world without glasses again! PS the price is around 4000 shekel from what I understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_Refractive_Therapy

Peace out,

Brezel - Is it a bagel or a pretzel?

Wandering around today I stumbled upon a new brezel shop.
Brezel:

It combines the good taste of a pretzel with something filling on the inside to make a good mid-day snack or light lunch. They are very tasty and are offered with a variety of meats and or cheeses. They also offer baguettes if a pretzel sized sandwich just isn't enough. The baguettes are made of the same dough as the brezels so you get the same good taste.



They can be found at 165 Dizengoff St. Tel Aviv Israel (near Ben Gurion St.).

Enjoy

huge party!

Chag sameach all! I was just at a huge (about 2000 people) party in Savion. It was very loud and very drunk. I brought earplugs and used them all night. I also drank lots of vodka. So much vodka that I'm not even hungover. I become quite pleasant when I'm drunk. Not too rowdy at all, just a little bit of singing and talking to strangers, but all-in-all quite pleasant. Everyone else also drank and taxies were in big demand. Our taxi driver Ronen was very nice, even offered to be my permanent taxi driver. I liked ronen more than his older brother who drove us to the party, Ronen was a bit more normal. During the party I was with Gayle, Aliza, Jeff, Oren, and Rachel. Once you get lost you have a very small chance of finding the group again. They brought in port-a-potties and plenty of bushes for peeing. There was the free alcohol table to make the 120sh ticket price worthwhile. There was also the paid alcohol table which is where the tequilla was (I stuck to the free vodka). There were dogs in buns being sold somewhere and a large cauldron with something hot in it. The music was too loud, but otherwise was decent. Only 1 field of dance so options (music-wise) were limited.

I'm off to a BBQ now, gnite all!

My nused couches

I have couches! What a feeling! I also have a pretty difficult living room so placing the couches has been a challenge. This is the current design:


Here's a picture of the 3 seater:


And a picture of the 2 seater:


I don't want my IKEA chair to be forgotten - so here it is:



And my old couch is now helping to make my office a little more welcoming:

workings of a שעון שבת (water heating timer)

PLEASE DON'T DO THIS BY YOURSELF; IT IS VERY DANGEROUS. This isn't a guide or tutorial, but rather a journal of discovery. I am not outlining the steps on how to do this, I am just describing the stuff I learned about it.

So I decided to buy a שעון שבת which is a timer for the electric water heater. This timer is meant to replace the on/off switch that I had previously. I don't recommend that anyone do this on their own. Always call up an electrician to do it. I will now share some interesting things that I learned about how one would hook up a timer.

The timer requires 3 wires to be connected to it. A ground wire, a phase (voltage) wire, and a wire that brings the phase to the water heater. From my wall I had 2 brown wires (the phase wire with live voltage, and the phase wire that goes to the water heater), and 1 black wire (the ground). The idea behind the timer is that there is a switch in the timer which connects the 2 brown wires together allowing the live voltage to be routed to the water heater to heat the water up.

There is no ground wire coming back from the water heater in order to complete the circuit. Apparently the water heater already has this connection either through a general building ground or the apartment's ground, but it doesn't come out of the wall.

The timer needs to have live voltage in order to move the clock forward when the water heater is not on, this means that it's important to hook the live voltage up where it is always feeding the timer's motor circuit.

Here's a rough drawing:
1 and 2 are for the brown wires (phase). 1 should get the brown wire that goes to the water heater, this wire when tested with ground should have no voltage. 2 should get the brown wire with voltage, this wire when tested with ground should have 220 volts (wall voltage where I live). 3 is for ground. The basic idea is that when the timer turns on then the switch between 1 and 2 connects, and the voltage flows from 2 to 1 and powers the water heater. Regardless of whether the switch is on the motor (M in the circle with tilde) gets power in order to power the clock on the timer.

This was an interesting bit of learning, and I hope it is enlightening for any who are interested.

the sheet drying hook up

I washed my sheets and I don't have a dryer. So where do I find enough space to hang sheets, It's a fitted sheet and a flat sheet and a pillowcase. Hmm. OK so normally I use 2 chairs for the fitted sheet and with the chairs pushed far enough away from each other and the sheet pulled around the chairs properly the fitted sheet dries and doesn't hit the floor. This worked fine. But the flat sheet usually goes on my laundry rack which, due to bad planning, was filled with other drying laundry. I will now outline the steps I took to find a solution.

I spent many minutes walking around my house looking for where to hang a double bed flat sheet. I couldn't find anything. Some might have given up by this time, but not me. I continued to analyze the situation. I decided that what was needed was a long string and place to hang the string. I don't own string, but I do have a 50 foot ethernet cable. That seemed like a great start. Now where do you hang ethernet cable from?

My computer room has 2 large closets with doors that open, and doors that open naturally have hinges. Voila! I have the first place for my cable to hang from - a hinge on a closet. The hinge idea got me looking around for other hinges and with ease I spotted the door to my computer room, another hinged item! This made for a perfect solution for where to hang the cable from.

So I wired the cable across the two hinges. But now I have to keep the cable from falling. On the side of the closet the tight space between the closet door and the closet itself hold the cable tight. On the side of the door it wasn't so tight, and the cable kept falling. In order to prevent this I tied the extra cable around the doorknow relying on it's staying power. This had a knot-like effect in keeping the cable high and steady.




So I hung the sheet on the cable - first time I hung it with those little pincher type things but it wasn't high enough for that. Hmm... But then I suddenly knew what I could do; I could fold the sheet over the cable and still get a great drying effect without the dirtying and no pincher thingies. This was brilliant.

All in all this was a very satisfying conclusion to a most difficult situation. The 24 hour laundromat down the street would have been a lot less satisfying.

Wishing everyone great solutions to everyday problems.