Android 4.0.3 on Nexus S is the best reason to upgrade to iPhone 4S

Upgraded my Nexus S to 4.0.3, battery life sucks, switched to iPhone 4S, end of story.

Skype on iPhone/iPod/iPad – bad/bad/bad

If you’re having trouble getting sound and/or video on a Skype call and one of you is on an iDevice of some sort, then just it’s not bandwidth which is messing you up, it’s the compute power on the iDevice.

Switch the culprit to a computer on the same network, and you’ll probably get a usable connection.

The reason is simply the way that the audio/video codecs work. They’ll drop frames if the machine/network can’t keep up.

Team BHP

Tried to create an account on Team BHP – the car forum which showed up on google while searching for a review on the Mahindra Thar.

Turns out that the car guru who runs that site has a really fragile ego, which needs stroking with a 1000 word essay praising him, his unwashed socks and the forum itself. Else no username/account for you!

Android 2.3.4 for Nexus S

Auto downloaded (some 12Mb). Phone restarted and installed without any problems. Not bad at all. Can’t see any major changes, except some obvious typos in the USB on/off dialog boxes have been fixed.

I haven’t yet tried out the new video chat alleged to be in this release. Now that Skype is going Microsoft, that’ll become a priority pretty soon.

Dumping all your Facebook connections’ birthdays into a calendar.

Okay, not quite a calendar. But if you connect your Amazon account with Facebook, Amazon will suck up FB data into one convenient page. You’ll see it under your “Amazon Facebook Page” when you’re logged into Amazon.

Click on “See all your friends on Facebook and their birthdays” and then ask for all friends on one page. There you are – complete with mugshots and links to gift suggestions.

Also marvel at how much information is out there about you and your buddies.

Google Streetview cars in Bangalore

Just saw a Google streeview car mapping out a really narrow road behind our house. No logos or markings, just a black Scorpio with the camera system on the roof. (When the maps come out, the white Honda blocking their way is mine.

Android 2.3.3 update for the Nexus S

The whole point of getting the Nexus S was to for the updates. So when 2.3.3 came out, I updated as soon as possible. Since the OTA update wasn’t available, I found the build on the google server, and updated manually.

I’ve done one OTA update earlier, and it was extremely simple and worked flawlessly. Never really liked the Apple IOS way of doing everything over USB.

But a manual Android update is a throwback to the days of Lunix. After copying the update to the sdcard filesystem, you need to put the phone into some kind of recovery/developer mode by rebooting, and keeping the Volume Up and Power buttons pressed at the same time. (Note that some websites will say Volume Down, but that’s wrong for the Nexus S.)

After that you have to scrolll through a couple of screens, select the update file and let the phone do its thing.

Flawless again. But.

1. The screen seems dimmer. There’s been some wailing and gnashing of teeth on this aspect on some sites, but I don’t mind the change.

2. Swype broke. Haven’t bothered to reinstall, but apparently that should fix it.

3. Google Books vanished and refuses to be found again in the Market App. A region thing, I guess.