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.  

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.

Ports 3 Resolving the Trilogy

Seeing as both of my viewers are sick of them now this is the last of the Ports for a long while.
We'll be adding both Smartphone and Handheld gaming fantasy ports now, ranging from the old to the brand new.

Onward.

Oh and we welcome back Snesorama, after the SOPACTA debacle and Megaupload takedown is back with a limited service.  So if you really want emulation "news" its there.

Ports.
First up some stray lambs from last time.
Azure Dreams. Snes

Konami takes on the rogue alike with this anime take on the genre. We actually liked this for PS1 and would like to see a simpler sprite version of this.  Tame Monsters and raise them to fight alongside you in the Monster tower, out of battle you can use you stuff you brought back to raise your town up from the backwater it is to a fine city.  You could also date the girls in town, including the creepy library owner who reads your memory card Otacon style.

Mighty Pang. PS1 Saturn.

One of the last CPS2 games and the last Pang game for a long time (magical Michael came out 8 years later).  Would love to see a nice version of this as it never made it to a home console and looking at Wikipedia they never released anything for Saturn. 

 NDS Games
Though coughing up blood now, the NDS has been both a success and criminally under exploited.  There are billions of mediocre cash ins for it involving pretending to be a small girl and poking horses with styluses.
That or ports of hidden object games and lacklusterBbejewelled clones including a not very good version of Popcaps cash cow.  Here are a few games I'd love to see for the wonder box.

Cannon Fodder.
War has never been so much fun, so said the old Amiga game.   Leading a pack of small soldiers to glory, trying not to get killed was one of the Amigas highlights.  Developed by Sensible Software, who would go onto make a sequel before abandoning it to some no mark Russians to piss all over the series for a shoddy PC sequel.  We would love to see this being ported to the DS along with using the stylus for controlling your troops.

Senisble Soccer, Saturn / NDS / iPad
 Which leads to this, I don't want Fifa  and its official names, we would love a port of the Original Snes ISS pro before it became Pro Evil (complete with Dog / Referee transformation please) and as a European we certainly want this.  Tiny little footballers with leagues of made up players, funny names and squads, and best of all gameplay.  I can see this working on either Saturn (with its sprite handling)  or iPad best thanks to its larger resolution screen.  I would love a DS port too as that would be cool.

Elite 2 Frontier.
Possibly what we have been craving for all along.  This is the premier Amiga space trading game of all time, true the combat is broken, but its got an autopilot now and a massive universe to explore and above all tense gameplay.  Do you grade up your ship or do you spend cash on repairs and max out your space on imported veg to flog onto mining worlds. It was an impressive job on the amiga and would love to see it be replicated for the DS.  Closest thing is Platinum games Infinite Space a space drama that plays a bit like the games but also more like a strategy game.

Romancing SaGa 1-3

We did gate some old Gameboy remakes for NDS but the SNES games would have worked well on the NDS.  Also known for being rock hard, these RPGS took no prisoners and would love to see them remade with the SaGa 2 engine.

Squigs.
A PD version of columns from an old Amiga Power disk, and possibly the only thing here that would stand a realistic chance of a Remake.  It was fun and had a rescue mode where you had to get down to a lone squig and rescue it.

Vandal Hearts.  We love this more than is Humanly possible especially the intro song which still haunts us now.  Unlike everthing I've added here this was being remade for DS but I suspect is long since cancelled, a shame as it was shaping up to be quite nice.

PSP
Still with a big following in Japan, the only game I can think of releasing may make it as a PSOne classic release like Xenogears did.

Saga Frontier 1+2
These actually work as Popsloasder games but would love to see a proper remake of both the two PS One games.

Blackberry.
Finally we'll finish up with some dregs for the Acorn Electron of smartphones.  Whereas the playbook seems to get all the emulator love and its true that all its games are substandard knock offs of original titles, we would love to see two things for the business phone.

Sunvox.
This is not a game rather a modular tracker that is ported to about a million mobile systems.  We would love to see this here simply because the only alternative is a relentlessly shit Kiss creator thing that reminds me of the bastard son of Music 2000 with in app purchasing and a crippled nun.   Come on fuckberry, it would work, your curve phones have proper keyboards so this would work and would give the kids something to do rather than message on BBM or play crap knock offs.

Finally an emulator, anything, even a ropey NES emulator for your phones. Though this would require it to not be signed by Blackberry and be open source.  Once you do that and have an unofficial store I think it would be much better.

 

 

 

Round the RIM. With Happy Hippos.

Because we really didn't look into it with any depth last time, (just outlined specs and a fantasy phone) we'll be putting in a full on review of our Quackberry Torch.  But first here is an update.

We gave you a full review of german chocolate and GBC game Das Geheimnis der Happy Hippo insel about 2 years back and despite adding this to the untranslated list over at Datacrystal we never thought that this would actually get a release.   This along with FDS Monty On The Run is possibly the most unlikeliest of Romhacks being as it is a translation from German to English and the second game I've actually requested being translated.

So far, what we've played of it, it seems pretty good.  You can get the patch here and read a bit of a review about it.  Now how about doing Snoopy Hajimete No Otsukai next...

Blackberry Torch: a review.

Forgive me if we covered bits of this in our fantasy fone piece but we'll be talking a little about our Blackberry Torch and how it fits in with other smartphones. 

First up is appearance.

Yup it looks nice.  You have an 8cm x 5cm touch screen, complete with 4 buttons and a  middle button that is a sort of analogue pad, (you press it and an arrow comes up simulating a mouse contact).  Its also black which means its a fingerprint magnet, and the touch screen while nice is aggravating, due to it triggering everytime you touch it intentionally and you really have to jab it when you want to trigger anything that you want to touch.

Software.

Comes with 7.0 version of Blackberry software and the usual Youtube / Facebook apps and stuff.  We have a mobile site to do our work with and its not that bad surfing.  Though you really do have to wonder about surfing the net on a tiny screen.  They give you a link to the Blackberry app store and of course BBM which we haven't set up.  We do have email and that, which isn't too bad.  Though Blackberry isn't so bad,
looking through the apps on the store reminds me of gaming back in the 80's lots of clones of popular ideas and lots of stuff that isn't free. 

Games.

We have two. First up is Brickbreaker an Arkanoid clone that looks like it was made in AMOS and handles like a pig on acid due to the janky touchscreen.  Though it has a one more go feel, sort of like Angry Birds, its a lets clear this level and get it over and done with, which is distinct from actual one more go, genuine gameplay as you can get.

The other is Wordmole. Which thankfully is excellent.  You have a grid of letters and have to make words to beat a time limit.  You can play through seasons and clearing a season gets you a sort of whack a vegetable (ironic seeing as the Wordmole himself is highly remedial looking, maybe he works for remploy) minigame.
The only downside is the highly suspect american English word list that won't recognise recognised words, we've lost games due to it baulking at regular words such as nib, nappy and maths.  Having said that its not bad at all.

Looking on the app store we see that £2 is the recommeded pricing point and maybe more (£5 for Gold miner) and due to it being on blackberry, its the gaming equivalent of a BBC model B, a nice idea but no one does any games for it.

Blackberry Desktop.

A semi servicable iTunes equivalent, it does sometimes want to sync your phone so it can slurp music and Photos, 9 times out of 10 it'll say connection sync failed and be a cunt about it.  It'll also auto import your music library a la iTunes but not your Pics and stuff.  Oh and is a real cunt about video files requiring only select MP4 files and  not having any free conversion tools out there to do it either.
Black marks there.

Overall.  If you can afford an Iphone or Android device then buy one of those they are better.   44%