Phone.

 We are looking round for a cheap Android phone to replace a mid range phone we've been using since about 2014 / 2015, First as my main phone then as work phone as I phased out a found iPhone4. 

I think its time to put a bullet in it and send it to the mobile graveyard. It lags and frequently runs out of storage. Its an old first gen Moto G, that has seen me through about 3 holidays and about 2 years of work. Complete with beat up case, that looks like its been chewed. I'll be sad to see it go, just gotta get my moxie up and see what will be its replacement.

My requirements are pretty basic, It has to have a good camera and if it was a main phone, some decent storage. A headphone port would be nice, but seeing as I don't make calls much, except in emergencies, having it actually be a phone is low on my priorities. so long as I can receive calls, thats it.

My budget is pretty low, I'd love a RedMi, seeing as my main phone is a Xiaomi, but am tending toward either Oppo or another Motorola, with its gorillion variations.

The 700 club

Forgive me if I'm banging on about this again, but there is nothing FOSS to explore phone stuff in 2022. 

No file grabbers, no unlockers, nothing to explore the system with. All you get is the usual Indian shill stuff and the buy our program bollocks. 

I've found yet another old phone, this time one identical to mine, but password locked, and have decided to see what there is, in 2022, to unlock for free...

And the answer is, nothing. It's basically ransomware type stuff that does nothing without payment, or you get to piss around with the factory reset settings. Either way the data you have on there is wiped, which is no fun at all.

In an unrelated story, I also scratched my ATM card, because it was in my work jacket, so I had to pop into the bank to sort it out and get a new one. Not fun this week. At all.

Farewell blackberry

 Looks like time has finally caught up with the BBC Micro of phones. My first ever phone was this stupid touch screen only Blackberry that was worse than useless. Except for one thing, it let you transfer stuff to it without problems. Readily showed up in Windows Explorer, and let you pull stuff off it. 

A shame as everything else was so bad, and woefully supported, they literally dropped the ball and didn't think about opening it out into an app store experience.

If you don't know what I'm going on about, Rim, or whatever they're called now, have finally pensioned off the old Blackbastard phone and are no longer updating the OS. It means calls or internet connectivity cannot be guaranteed, let alone emergency numbers. 

Not that it matters you can still play brickbreaker and wordmole as they are literally the only two games developed with it. I only wish someone would have ported protracker to the old keyboard phone as it seemed a bit of a no brainer. Anyway this isn't farewell more like a fuck off.

Oh and here is a time when we tried to port Android lollipop over with no little success.

Phone stuff.

Found a phone at work during the week. Someone was clearing out a load of old stuff and I got this along with a DSi which works perfectly and contained literally a million pictures of kids goofing around before I formatted it for hacking.

The phone however was locked. and, looking at its specs, is considerably worse than anything I've actually used, including the touch screen only work issue Blackbastard I had circa 2013. Which fact fans, was my first ever Mobile. 

I never got anything android to sync up right either. Old Apple, while being an utter cunt to do at least lets you look at digital photos, and digital only, Android, doesn't. Thought I'd have a look at the internal storage, seeing as SD and chip was removed. Then thought about removing the password lock, to let me at least let me nose about the file system.

Which brings me to my main rant. All phone unlocking software is borderline unusable for a freeloading perspective. 

Most software will do nothing unless you pay for it, it will not unlock or remove anything and expect you to pony up money in advance to do stuff. Like I say, its borderline unusable.

What we need is some sort of FOSS android explorer, akin to testdisk is for Hardrives. Something that will when you sync up your phone immediately bring up a menu that lets you explore the file system, browse files and copy things across to PC/Mac Linux Amiga, like iTunes but not shit and more hackery.

If I could program, I'd totally do this (that or a PVR HD dumper, face it, this is going to be the future front for preservation.) probably add in a unlocker too, to make it a swiss army toolkit.

Finally had a look at a crack for this before remembering that all cracks are malware shit, without exception. Downloaded one and Antivir caught it immediately.

Ideal phone.

Been thinking about phones recently. Apart from going from none, at the start of the decade to owning three in 2020, they are all pretty much of a muchness. This is a run down of all the phones I've owned with a good approximation of my ideal phone.

Blackberry was like owning an unpopular home computer back in the 1980's something like a BBC Model B with all the support that gathered as well. I know they're ARM now but back in the 80's they were the fail. It's the only phone I've ever cracked the screen of, and predictably fucked it up good.

The only good things about it is that it would connect to a PC with ease and used Micro SD cards for storage so you could grab stuff off it or put stuff on with no problem.

My next phone was my current work phone. This was its replacement and is one of the 1st generation Moto G Motorola phones. It's still works and was used principally as a camera for ages before being demoted to a work phone. It's also the only phone I've ever bought with cash money, the rest were found.

Its kinda like a hermit crab, as its storage is  absolutely stuffed with bugger all room to add new stuff, Largely due to a bloated android system and ill written apps. I wonder if you could run an OS from the memory card. rather than internal storage.

My current phone which is also android but also closer to iPhone in its layout. That stupid SIM card tray and no external storage, but also with a much better camera and a higher operating system.

Finally I had an iPhone 4 which was my work phone for ages, Apple killed support for it years ago and all 32 bit apps have long since been shoahed from the app store. It was a nice palm sized beast even if it did run ios, which required iTunes to sync anything unless its photos. Nice built in apps too.

Ideal phone, then?

Taking the three systems I've owned and breaking them down to essentials, I would part them out as such.

Blackberry. Connectivity to PC.

Android. Wealth of apps and a decent camera.

iPhone. Design and built in apps.

If I was designing an OS, it would go something like this. 

Around 500 MB > 1GB in size. Compact and no bloat whatsoever. Optionally to run from an SD card.

Must connect to a computer without the need for any additional file manager software on the computer behalf. 

A well designed bunch of system apps. This includes a calendar/ diary, basic notebook, world time clock, weather app, internet browser, Camera , text, phone and file explorer. A basic calculator, Sound Recorder and some system benchmarking tools for checking battery life. I really don't want to any Siri or Alexa ok Google type bollocks so it won't be added. 

Mandatory ad blocking system wide and a draconian attitude to app permissions. Think script block but OS based.

A  removable battery and headphone socket would also be mandatory as well.  

MI5

If you're hoping for the Great Airport Mystery to be up, then I'm still going through it.  Proof reading is sort of done, I'm reading through to catch any formatting hazards and typos that may have skipped through the spell check. Next week I swear it'll be done and you'll have a revised PDF to download.

Anyway today's topic, we've been lucky and found a phone and its one obscure motherfucker.  A Xiaomi Mi5 and not MI5, its Chinese, not part of the secret service.

Thought it was one of those demonstration models to begin with and not a real phone but when I switched it on and had a butchers its definitely the real deal.

A decent camera, and the UI on this isn't too awful, its a step down from the Moto G I have as a regular phone and about on a par with an iPhone which I use for work (also found), which it resembles in more ways than one.

I'm not kidding, its as if China decided to make an Android version of the iPhone with a little less of Apples notorious control freakery.  Below is a list of things its cribbed from the fruit company.

Sim slot that opens with a pin: check.

An unexpandable internal storage: check. (64GB so god knows how much Google takes up).

A stupid proprietary software that you have to use to add anything to it. Check and its a lot less cunty than iTunes which should be cast into the Fires of hell.

Edit. A stupid proprietary connector to connect everything with.  Apple Lightning, USB type C.

A User Interface that is closer to Apple than Android. . . erm. . .  pass.

There are some upsides to this though, The phone itself has two sim slots which is crazy, and it feels real nice which is a bonus. The only other thing is that I manage to knack it within a day.

I thought you could just hard reset it and set up with a new user, the trouble with that is that it still requires the old google account, and all its bastard data, to do anything with.  I'm banking on flashing the firmware will fix that otherwise I'm stuck in a boot loop of my own making. And I still don't know if the IMEI number is blocked.

FYI it takes a nano sim or two nano sims if you have different networks.

I don't know if that is part of the android experience or not, I didn't do this to my found Apple as the original guy didn't do much with it and could erase him from existence with ease without going through a hard reset.  Could have left it as it was, but would have had to rely on someone else's google account to download stuff and have no email or phone number of my own.

I guess its just the Gmail account that is the stumbling block here so maybe lineage OS or whatever they are calling Cyanogen Mod  these days, {Edit its Lineage OS}  Otherwise its down to the Indians in the phone shop to check it out.

Edit.  It was the Gmail account, had to look up for FRP bypass and managed to get a guide that worked, phone is unlocked but still has no sim to check if its blocked.

Update stuff.

Been an odd couple of days really.  First of all the virus I thought my PC had turned out to be a false positive brought on by misidentifying some Delphi programs.  Its all moot now as its been quarantined.

Secondly those rogues at Applian are still in business and still pumping out freecorder updates. Of course like every rogue trader its not called freecorder now but Replay Media Catcher Oh and its also paid for software now instead of free costing £30 (about $50 us or 40 Useless for Europeans).  As a side note I noted something called flvsrvc.exe in process hacker while browsing my start up directory, its not malicious but would definitely be classed as a PUP as its virtually impossible to remove. Guess what its leftovers from Freecorder.

Judging by the smug responses here, it seems that they know all about it and yes I would call it a virus or worse, in fact a lot of people would say that if you are going to drop £30 on shite to record stuff (especially audio) on the web then do us a favour and get an external soundcard and audacity and look for a guide to set up stereo mix options as they often nerf the channels on internal cards.

Also as a side note we have a couple of cool programs for Android (also ios for Apple wankers).

First up is NHK clock which really should be your standard Android system clock, is a nice looking version of an onscreen clock that used to be on NHK.  Browsing through there are versions for Vista and Mac as well as an actual wall clock for １０，５８４円 (£60 plus shipping) in light blue and wood grain.  The app is free and has a (loud) time signal on the hour.

Finally Terra Battle has updated to finally let me register and play and its a really nice strategy rpg. Done by Hironobu Sakaguchi's Mistwalker studios its like a board game, in execution, you move pieces once per turn and if they flank an enemy then they battle doing damage. You'll need a wifi connection as its one of those server based free to play buggers, but its not to heavy on the microtransactions and is of a real nice quality.

Fully xxxpanded

Kicked out a particularly nasty virus this past couple of days.  Win.32 Banker according to Avast, did a boot time scan to root it out and a follow up scan to see if everything was caught.  Been having unexplained crashes for a while and blamed it on a windows update going rogue, everything would be fine until it wasn't and would freeze you out so the only thing to do was unplug and reboot, I'm pretty sure it was downloading random apk. files that got me this as well.  Which brings us onto our main story.

We grabbed a little Micro SD card from the floor of one of the blocks at work, its got a few nice things including some porno (hint we never find porn,) and a few tracks by some grime artists. The pron ain't all that, think more hard faced teens rather than amateur stuff and a lot of screen grabs including stuff from adultwork. 

The main odd thing I've come across is an APK. file for xxxpanded.tv one of the innumerable shake and grind channels from the upper reaches of Sky's channel guide.  You know the deal, they play some decent music and have the roughest slags available, shake their ass live, you never see any gash, and once in a while they'll be a half way decent girl on without tattoos or that heavily made up.  It isn't that erotic and quite frankly does nothing for me, so was quite surprised to see that there was a download of this in the download folder.

What it does.
From what I could tell from Bluestacks not much, at least it worked (Terra Battle and Puzzle and Dragons of which I've downloaded a few times now have never worked).  It gives you a list of phone lines to the girls online and a chance to look at their profile and hear an audio message or see a seawater quality clip of them try to act sexy through all the artifacts onscreen.  I wouldn't recommend opening up Audacity, selecting stereo mix from the drop down list and clicking record before you play the clip.  and I especially wouldn't recommend exporting the clip to use as free samples.  I suppose if you wanted to try it out on your phone you could actually dial the number and waste a bunch of money on some sex line but seeing as its going nowhere near my phone and as far as I can tell Bluestacks doesn't let you ring anyone its pretty much redundant.

Apart from that it did fuck all else, no live streams like on their site or TV schedule with the same 4 manky brasses.

 In fact if you are going to go anywhere near teh pron, then I would suggest this course of action.
Get antivirus up to date.
Same with any anti malware.
Add Noscript and an ad block to any browser you use 
They'll whinge like fuck when you visit but you can add just enough stuff so it'll play without you being bothered by ads and stuff.

Stuff missing from Android.

Or stuff that they should bundle in with Android but don't.  If you are lucky enough to have an Android phone / tablet that isn't overburdened with bloatware you'll know how basic and spartan the actual Android experience is.  If you've ever used Chrome from Google then you'll probably have the same stuff, a few basic things like G Mail, Youtube, Translate, Google Drive and the much loathed and widely shunned Google plus. Add in a link to the Appstore, plus the usual camera, phone / text apps and whatever your manufacturer deems is essential but isn't, and that is it.

Of course its up to you to add more relevant stuff but coming from a blackbastard (berry honestly its that horrible) and iThing environment, its surprising how little there is on there.  So here is a few things they should bundle with the stock android experience in no particular order.

Total Commander.

Available for the PC as well, this is a file manager and so much more.  If you have files on an SD Card and want to transfer them over (such as APK. files) or wish to play music without bothering with Google music you can.  Of course it does much more than that but this is what I use it for. You can poke through your file system and manage files on your system, something sorely missing from the main android experience. So many uses and such fun to do.

Amazon Appstore.

My blackbastard never had access to this only blackbastard world, but if you ever had a Kindle later blackbastard phone or Fire phone / Stick this is what you use to buy and manage apps.  For some reason Google have banned it (i'm guessing competition) but its pretty easy to install and that.  You'll need an Amazon account to make use of this but its easy to make and they regularly have free app days so you can get a lot of free stuff you'd normally pay for.

Adblock Plus.

Ever tried to surf the web with a billion ads, they add nothing to the whole surfing experience and can be actively dangerous.  I've used an adblocker for ages back in dial up days when pages would load quicker with less stuff to render and later on to block ads from Youtube and the web.  I don't have this on my phone yet but there will come a time when I will add it such is its usefulness.  Said to block ads in games as well but don't know if it does.

An Antivirus Suite.

Something that isn't actually banned but with android malware and stuff being widespread I would consider this being something they should have added. I know its just like PC stuff where you get a hideous Norton or McAfee antivirus that is a cunt to uninstall, but android is so much more insecure than the other networks that I consider a good antivirus protection a right not an option.

I'll consider some stuff that should be on iPhone for a later blog entry (I'm running an iPhone 4 so these may have been fixed but I doubt it).

Agave reporting and worse.

This was going to be a nice little post about some stuff iTunes does that Google Play doesn't as well as further differences, but then something came up to do that.  (short version you can download programs from the app store on PC and sync them to your phone, tab, ipod thus saving data).

It's a big cactus rant coming up so be warned.  There are two stories doing the rounds at the moment both have succumbed to ill informed journalism of the highest order.

The first is a few months old now but I bookmarked it because I knew I'd have a use for it.

Somerset Pensioner pricks hand on Pachypodium spines and suffers quite a bit of discomfort.

Actually quite a lot to be honest reading the article again and if you know your succulents, which this is, you'll know that its a Pachypodium Lamerei also known as a Madagascar Palm.  Its a member of the Apocynaceae rather than the Palmaceae, definitely not a cactus of any shape or form.  Oleander and Desert Rose are also part of that family which are also massively toxic too.  My only consolation to the old lady involved is that if she ever wants it repotted again, is to take a long strip of newspaper and wrap it round the plant as a collar, and grab both free ends, so you can manipulate it that way.

Predictably it didn't get reported anywhere quite as good as this in the national press.  The Daily Mail where I read this first, adds a couple of bizarre things about it being a dangerous alien species and linking it to the Giant Hogweed allergy outbreak which it is neither.  There is also a bit about giving it away which doesn't appear in the main story which is a shame as it has the most wonderful white flowers.

Pachypodium Lamerei Flower.

I wasn't quite expecting the next story, but its also fits in with the general non fact checking and sloppy reporting when it comes to succulents and such.

Ramsgate Gardens celebrate the flowering of a veteran Agave.

The main story concerns the flowering of an Agave Americana at the Italianate Greenhouse in Ramsgate, and really impressive it is too, with a good 2 meters or so poking out of the roof hatch. 

For some reason its been labelled as rare, which it isn't, there's millions of them dotted about the Mediterranean, and the Canary Islands and its often seen on clifftops and at the side of the various Autopistas going to the resorts.  Put it this way I always seem to get a picture of them either in flower or showing some imposing leaves in every holiday I've been on.   Its uncommon  to see them flower here but isn't unheard of and apart from the Edinburgh Botanic gardens, there are many documented cases of them flowering here in the UK.   

Looking through back issues of the Cactusworld journal I've come across several news articles about people flowering their Agaves, including a Victoria Reginae up in Grimsby and an Agave Salmiana flowering for the third time down in Devon (of course from different offsets). Its uncommon but not unheard of and in both cases the plants where around the 45 to 50 year old mark, nowhere near a century, which is about the age of the plant in Ramsgate.  

 The main press have reported this variously there is a quite frankly, marvelous piece in the Daily Telegraph which gives you some facts about the park and Agaves as well.  The Mail expands on this but makes a few errors about it being rare and cold vulnerable, (its not just doesn't like the wet like all succulents) apart from that its redeemed by the comments which are genuinely interesting for once.  

I'll add a few things which was cool that may happen to their specimen that I've seen in the wild.  It may attract ants, as Agave Nectar is used as a poncey sugar substitute, I saw this in Menorca, with quite a column going up and down the main flower spike.  It may offset from the flowers itself, I managed to bring home an offset that I knocked off myself from one such holiday, and finally it maybe used as a mooring stake for a small boat, which is what I saw in Corfu. 

More on Phones.

For some reason I've managed to go from having a phone that wasn't my own to owning two phones in the space of a week.  I found lying around on the grass, an iphone 4 and while its hardly cutting edge, talking it over with the guys at work (who showed us how to do stuff) it seems that its still pretty good and also gives me a crucial snapshot into the Apple way of doing things.

Stuff I like so far is that whoever owned it before had the decency to get it unlocked to any network and this is how it should be for all phones, not dependent on one carrier.  Also its pretty intuitive on how to do stuff, with a big physical button to go exit programs and that, and after a bit of a struggle got myself an "app store"  login.  Finally the little tray that your sim card sits in and is accessible with a pin, is part of the overall good design work Apple stuff generally has.

Then the downsides kick in, you have to partner up a credit / debit card if you want to download anything.  I haven't found a way for it just to accept iTunes vouchers only and decline the rest or just install whatever the apple equivalent of APKs are, at least Google let you install stuff from other sources which is pretty cool.  If they let you divest all payment to iTunes cards only it would to be honest, cut out some of the horror stories of paying thousands for items in F2P bollocks like Candy Crush.

Even worse, some stuff are of course verboten on Apples draconian walled garden.  Doing a search for emulation stuff brought up a few links to a few other app stores like Cydia and another one which seems to be just for Emulation stuff.  Largely its those dodgy Movie HD type streaming stuff, anything torrent related and emulation, especially if it allows you to supply your own roms.

Finally you don't get any SD card support so you can't expand storage from what your phone has.  There are ways around this of course such as using Dropbox or any other online file locker to keep hold of content.  Plus as its synced to your PC, it cuts out Apple's horrific iTunes software (less so on mac).  Also battery life is of course appalling with it literally ticking down every minute you're on line so certain games that rely on a server connection are pretty much out.

Blackberry Requiem.

We have a new phone, a lovely Moto G from Motorola, we haven't set it up yet but here's hoping it wont disappoint, it really needs me to set up WiFi again for all sorts of reasons so more news when I do so.

My old work phone took a fatal hit to the screen, midweek, and is now semi operational.  The blackbastard as I affectionately called it wasn't entirely terrible, it was just an unsupported nightmare. with nothing of any value on the BBM store (little free and no emulators, remember this is a classic Blackberry not the new APK compatible phone its become now). It did do some things nice, such as physical controls and erm... that's it.  But its negatives outweigh the positives. Vastly.

I'm currently using my bosses old phone a touch screen Blackberry Curve, the version where they gut the entire physical keyboard and try to kid us that its an improvement.  Its not of course, its a plastic shelled abomination masquerading as a smartphone, with a screen the size of a postage stamp and the same horrible onscreen keyboard that is a nightmare to use.  I've never used a physical keyboard Blackberry phone, but I would imagine that the keyboard there would be a vast improvement over what we have in both the Curve and Torch models.

Its said that work is upgrading us to iPhones sometime in the near future but as I hate the entire Apple ethos (and more pertinently used iTunes) I don't see myself going ahead.

A milestone of such.

Didn't realise this until I checked in but this will be my 333rd post up here, not that you get anything for this, just noted and that.

Its a bit of a round up special this time with some weird RPGs on Android / PC, a brief bit more on the Vita SDK and finally Mitchum.

Odd RPG's
Been going through an old copy of Famitsu at bedtime, its the issue where they talk to Prof Layton developer Level 5 about stuff, but that's not why I'm here, they have a strange Japan only RPG selection for PC and Mobile.

So far I've seen one where your avatars are cars in female form, there's a Toyota, a Nissan and what I think is a Mitsubishi all represented by anime girls.  There are a few more weird ones

Weird tower making sim with girls wielding tools.

WW2 war sim with girls taking the place of tanks and planes and that.

Oh and Animal X Monster for Android.  Some weird Pachinko rpg free 2 play thing for mobiles.
Stream here.  Skip ahead to 10 min mark for action, looks much more fun than regular Pachinko.

Incidentally there are no translations or anything so if you want to test these out and are fluent or have access to the Japanese google Play store see what they're like as I doubt they'd run in blue stacks.

Mitchum!

Finally saw an ad for this on TV (though still no actual product in the shop).  For those following for a while I did a post on how I did a bit of market research/ focus testing for them awhile back.  I got £5 for my troubles and never saw anything of it. Looks like nothings changed.

Vita SDK.

There's a bit more on this at Yifan Lu's site and a write up on some technical hacking bits and bobs.  Its quite involved the hack and required you to be part of the Sony Publisher license (now defunct).   If you went through all these hoops and such, you could run homebrew stuff on Vita (not piracy) so get coding those emulators.

Junk Tour and android shenanigans

You probably have seen the last post about contacting Virgin Media, well they contacted me in the end shortly after I had come back from voting.  Offering a nice bait of 50 Meg Broadband and a free £5 phone chip chucked in that was simply too much for me and I literally bit their hand off asking for a sign up.  The chip came yesterday after I had gone out so was a nice surprise waiting for me when I got in.

We decided to look around Stratford before going on one of my well worn haunts to Walthamstow to see what could be had for around about the £100 mark for a used phone as quite frankly my work phone is a piece of shit.  Of course this rules out iPhone (the fact it needs iTunes and there's no emulators unless you hack it is the final nail in their overpriced coffin) and Blackberry (the TRS 80 of smart phones, no support, and what games there are aren't free, consider this when work switched phone providers, I didn't bother adding blackberry world to my phone).  It leaves Android which I kinda like seeing as everything gets ported there after a fashion and Windows phone (the new blackberry i.e third place and with little support go on M$ give 'em Xbox live games its the least you can do).

Poking around Cex and the likes is actually quite fun, Stratford has for sale in the tiny mall across from Westfield (never liked) a limited edition 20th anniversary PS4 yours for £1325.  There were a few Samsung smart watches for sale and a few of their flagship phones for around the £600 mark.  Apple had their iPhone 6 on sale too (its the horse sized Plus model not the normal one) with real gold trim for £650.  We did pick up Disgaea 3 for Vita but it turned out to be a bust as they shipped the sequel instead so we had to return it.

I've narrowed it down to a few possibilities which I'll have to research but Samsung S3 is now around the £100 mark, a mate of mine had one and he absolutely loves it, and the Blackbastard Z10 can sideload Android APKs (despite Blackberry being awful), finally I saw an Amazon Fire phone, which if its anything like amazon products it'll be full of Amazon rubbish you can't get rid of without rooting.  All I want really is a droid phone that calls rarely and plays apk files just like Bluestacks does.

Finally a few links and shouts out to end your day.

Want to see Nintendo's new employees brochure for 2015?

I know its the Daily Cunting Mirror but its an article about a Victor Lewis Smith phone prank on Princess Di and Stephen Hawkings. Also rerun of 1990 show on Radio 4 Extra.