Hi All, Three dumb questions, possibly: I've never had a smart phone, and probably need to get one soon. For the time being, I'd rather use it just as a GPS... and as an Android learning tool, when near our home wifi. (Moving up to a voice/data plan some months from now.) So: 1) Could I run it as a GPS to help me navigate on the road, even though it would not have a SIM card in it? (i.e. Load some detailed Melbourne roadmap and a GPS application into it at home via the wifi, and then rely solely on the GPS to help me navigate from spot to spot as I do my part-time casual driving job.) 2) Do (m)any Android smartphones have removable and readily available/affordable after-market batteries? (I tend to hang on to things for a long time, and it's always the batteries that die [over time] on such devices for me. Manufacturer's replacement batteries tend to cost as much as an entire device.) 3) Can one reasonably connect a REAL keyboard to a smartphone? (I hate the absurd tiny touch-keyboards on small devices, and the quasi-Morse Code of using a phone number pad.) Thanks a lot. Carl Turney Bayswater p.s. Anyone living/working east of the CBD got a second-hand Android smart-phone with GPS to sell? Contact me directly, off list. Ta.
Hi Carl, 1) Yes, but you'll need to download (and quite possibly buy) a GPS solution from someone else other than Google. Have a look HERE<http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-help/21106-gps-usage-without-wifi-3g.html> as a few options are mentioned. You will need a fair amount of internal storage to hold the maps. Micro SD cards are cheap but so are data plans from MVNOs like Vaya or Amaysim. If I was you I'd just get a no contract data plan for the months leading up to you swapping your normal plan over. The Google maps/navigation program is very good! And it's worth having a data connection as it will give you the best route for the traffic conditions at that given time. 2) Only very few android based telephones DON'T have removable batteries so you should be fine there. From what I understand it's only really the tablets that don't often have removable batteries. If the phone you choose does have a removable battery (it probably will) you'll be able to find 1001 different replacements on the internet. If you're looking for a stock battery just get an OEM one as there are many low quality cheap and nasty batteries out there. On the other hand if you're looking for more juice there are usually high capacity options from reputable companies like Mugen power etc. 3) Yes you can easily use an external keyboard with the device. Have a look on ebay if you want a smallish keyboard.. I think you can even get them embedded into cases! They just then plug into the USB port on the device. Remember you may need an adapter if the male and female USB plugs are not the same type. Cheers, On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Carl Turney <carl@boms.com.au> wrote:
Hi All,
Three dumb questions, possibly:
I've never had a smart phone, and probably need to get one soon. For the time being, I'd rather use it just as a GPS... and as an Android learning tool, when near our home wifi. (Moving up to a voice/data plan some months from now.)
So:
1) Could I run it as a GPS to help me navigate on the road, even though it would not have a SIM card in it? (i.e. Load some detailed Melbourne roadmap and a GPS application into it at home via the wifi, and then rely solely on the GPS to help me navigate from spot to spot as I do my part-time casual driving job.)
2) Do (m)any Android smartphones have removable and readily available/affordable after-market batteries? (I tend to hang on to things for a long time, and it's always the batteries that die [over time] on such devices for me. Manufacturer's replacement batteries tend to cost as much as an entire device.)
3) Can one reasonably connect a REAL keyboard to a smartphone? (I hate the absurd tiny touch-keyboards on small devices, and the quasi-Morse Code of using a phone number pad.)
Thanks a lot.
Carl Turney Bayswater
p.s. Anyone living/working east of the CBD got a second-hand Android smart-phone with GPS to sell? Contact me directly, off list. Ta. _______________________________________________ luv-talk mailing list luv-talk@lists.luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-talk
-- Tom Wilkins Kampuchea House (Australia) Inc. A home for Cambodian orphans and deserted children M: +61430085580 M (KH): +855888542424 E: tom@kampucheahouse.org W: www.kampucheahouse.org
Tom Wilkins <tom@kampucheahouse.org> wrote:
1) Yes, but you'll need to download (and quite possibly buy) a GPS solution from someone else other than Google. Have a look HERE<http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-help/21106-gps-usage-without-wifi-3g.html>
I haven't checked, but Open StreetMaps may have a solution for you. Failing that, however, you may find the map data expensive to purchase (more so than an extra few months of mobile data access).
2) Only very few android based telephones DON'T have removable batteries so you should be fine there.
If memory serves, the Nexus 4 is one of the recent exceptions to the above: its battery is not user removable. It also lacks an SD card slot (and support for LTE). In other respects, it's an impressive product.
3) Yes you can easily use an external keyboard with the device. Have a look on ebay if you want a smallish keyboard.. I think you can even get them embedded into cases! They just then plug into the USB port on the device.
You can also use a bluetooth keyboard (provided of course that the phone supports Bluetooth, as most of them do).
All great points! I forgot about bluetooth... whoops! Yeah that's probably your best bet for a keyboard. On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
Tom Wilkins <tom@kampucheahouse.org> wrote:
1) Yes, but you'll need to download (and quite possibly buy) a GPS solution from someone else other than Google. Have a look HERE< http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-help/21106-gps-usage-without-wifi-...
I haven't checked, but Open StreetMaps may have a solution for you. Failing that, however, you may find the map data expensive to purchase (more so than an extra few months of mobile data access).
2) Only very few android based telephones DON'T have removable batteries so you should be fine there.
If memory serves, the Nexus 4 is one of the recent exceptions to the above: its battery is not user removable. It also lacks an SD card slot (and support for LTE). In other respects, it's an impressive product.
3) Yes you can easily use an external keyboard with the device. Have a look on ebay if you want a smallish keyboard.. I think you can even get them embedded into cases! They just then plug into the USB port on the device.
You can also use a bluetooth keyboard (provided of course that the phone supports Bluetooth, as most of them do).
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-- Tom Wilkins Kampuchea House (Australia) Inc. A home for Cambodian orphans and deserted children M: +61430085580 M (KH): +855888542424 E: tom@kampucheahouse.org W: www.kampucheahouse.org
On 31 July 2013 18:29, Tom Wilkins <tom@kampucheahouse.org> wrote:
1) Yes, but you'll need to download (and quite possibly buy) a GPS solution from someone else other than Google. Have a look HERE<http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-help/21106-gps-usage-without-wifi-3g.html> as a few options are mentioned. You will need a fair amount of internal storage to hold the maps. Micro SD cards are cheap but so are data plans from MVNOs like Vaya or Amaysim. If I was you I'd just get a no contract data plan for the months leading up to you swapping your normal plan over. The Google maps/navigation program is very good! And it's worth having a data connection as it will give you the best route for the traffic conditions at that given time.
In case it isn't clear from the above, current versions of Google maps/navigation will NOT work without a continuous online connection. Or rather, it will display your location, but not be able to load map tiles, so be rather useless. This is also a problem if you travel somewhere without any 3G reception for your carrier, which was a problem for me, at places, when driving from Melbourne to Canberra, even with a NextG SIM.
Brian May wrote:
In case it isn't clear from the above, current versions of Google maps/navigation will NOT work without a continuous online connection. Or rather, it will display your location, but not be able to load map tiles, so be rather useless.
Wasn't there some shibboleth you could use to precache map tiles locally?
Wasn't there some shibboleth you could use to precache map tiles locally?
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/ok-maps-cache-this-map.html Basically you'd show an area on the screen, then put "OK Maps" in the search box. Apparently now they're adding a formal option back to cache.
On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au> wrote:
On 31 July 2013 18:29, Tom Wilkins <tom@kampucheahouse.org> wrote:
1) Yes, but you'll need to download (and quite possibly buy) a GPS solution from someone else other than Google. Have a look HERE as a few options are mentioned. You will need a fair amount of internal storage to hold the maps. Micro SD cards are cheap but so are data plans from MVNOs like Vaya or Amaysim. If I was you I'd just get a no contract data plan for the months leading up to you swapping your normal plan over. The Google maps/navigation program is very good! And it's worth having a data connection as it will give you the best route for the traffic conditions at that given time.
In case it isn't clear from the above, current versions of Google maps/navigation will NOT work without a continuous online connection. Or rather, it will display your location, but not be able to load map tiles, so be rather useless.
Well not quite correct, if you know your route in advance while you have WiFi you can make a map area available offline see http://www.androidauthority.com/google-maps-offline-ok-maps-easter-egg-24158... for information It is a pain to use offline in google maps and I personally use navigon from garmin on my S3 which is completely offline but is around $50 (I got a free version included with the S3) I did try OSMAnd for a while but you needed a data connection to do the routing, maps were offline though. It may have changed now as I have not used it recently. -- Mark "Pockets" Clohesy Mob Phone: (+61) 406 417 877 Email: hiddensoul@twistedsouls.com G-Talk: mark.clohesy@gmail.com GNU/Linux..Linux Counter #457297 - "I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code" "Linux is user friendly...its just selective about who its friends are"
Tom Wilkins wrote:
3) Yes you can easily use an external keyboard with the device. Have a look on ebay if you want a smallish keyboard.. I think you can even get them embedded into cases! They just then plug into the USB port on the device. Remember you may need an adapter if the male and female USB plugs are not the same type.
Are cellphone USB ports ubiquitously "OTG"? Otherwise a gotcha would be buying a phone that only had a slave port, so it can plug into a computer, but you can't plug devices into it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go Hm, from reading that, it sounds like OTG is implemented by the OS (like a WPA supplicant) and has no physical component other han a stock USB port.
Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Are cellphone USB ports ubiquitously "OTG"?
Otherwise a gotcha would be buying a phone that only had a slave port, so it can plug into a computer, but you can't plug devices into it.
I'm also interested in this. According to documentation that I've read, there are USB host adapters that can be used, but I don't know what conditions the port on the device has to meet.
On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:05:35 Carl Turney wrote:
I've never had a smart phone, and probably need to get one soon. For the time being, I'd rather use it just as a GPS... and as an Android learning tool, when near our home wifi. (Moving up to a voice/data plan some months from now.)
For what you are talking about you might be better off buying a cheap tablet. Android phones and tablets are almost identical apart from size and the ability to make phone calls.
1) Could I run it as a GPS to help me navigate on the road, even though it would not have a SIM card in it? (i.e. Load some detailed Melbourne roadmap and a GPS application into it at home via the wifi, and then rely solely on the GPS to help me navigate from spot to spot as I do my part-time casual driving job.)
Many phones will refuse to boot without a SIM, but an inactive SIM will be fine. So keeping a collection of old SIMs is a good idea. I can probably bring one to the next LUV meeting if you end up getting a phone that needs a SIM. The Open Street maps program has been mentioned, the app name is "osmand". The "free" version allows a limited number of vector maps to be downloaded, from memory I think you can have 10 maps when all you probably need is the world map and the map of Australia. Osmand wasn't very useful for looking up locations last time I tried (there was no partial search facility). But if you just want to look at a map of your current location with a dot showing where you are then it works really well. Unless you are going to be regularly out of range of cell towers this won't be an issue. I expect that you will get a 3G plan that has a decent amount of data included soon enough. Once you try a modern smart phone you're sure to like it.
2) Do (m)any Android smartphones have removable and readily available/affordable after-market batteries? (I tend to hang on to things for a long time, and it's always the batteries that die [over time] on such devices for me. Manufacturer's replacement batteries tend to cost as much as an entire device.)
http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/ Most of them have removable batteries. I've bought replacement batteries from Mugen Power in the past and found them to be quite good. Mugen specialise in batteries that are better than those shipped by the manufacturer. They aren't the cheapest seller but you're looking at maybe $35 for a battery that works well instead of maybe $15 for one that probably doesn't. http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/12/21/galaxy-s3-power-case/ Also you can get a case which has a battery for many of the more popular phones, in the above blog post I review one that I got for my Galaxy S3. http://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/05/29/nexus-4/ It has been noted that the LG Nexus 4 is one of the few phones that doesn't allow replacing the battery. It's also one of the phones that doesn't have an option of buying a battery case (or at least it didn't when I wanted to buy one). The battery on the Nexus 4 doesn't last nearly as long as the Galaxy S3 (see the above URL). So I while the Nexus 4 is cheap and full featured it's not the phone to get if you want good battery life. You can get external battery packs for phones. This is OK if you want to have a large battery in your pocket while playing Ingress but not good for most other phone use.
3) Can one reasonably connect a REAL keyboard to a smartphone? (I hate the absurd tiny touch-keyboards on small devices, and the quasi-Morse Code of using a phone number pad.)
There are a variety of Bluetooth keyboards available, the majority of them aren't real keyboards (not nearly as big as on a laptop) but they can be a significant improvement for some people. I bought one and didn't find it particularly useful, I found that a better solution to the problem of a tiny on- screen keyboard was to buy a Samsung Galaxy Note 2. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Hi, On 16/08/2013 9:11 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
Many phones will refuse to boot without a SIM, but an inactive SIM will be fine. So keeping a collection of old SIMs is a good idea. I can probably bring one to the next LUV meeting if you end up getting a phone that needs a SIM.
The Nokia E71 requires a SIM for WiFi .... it seems to enable extra parts when the SIM is installed, even if the SIM is otherwise dead (old and not network connected).
2) Do (m)any Android smartphones have removable and readily available/affordable after-market batteries? (I tend to hang on to things for a long time, and it's always the batteries that die [over time] on such devices for me. Manufacturer's replacement batteries tend to cost as much as an entire device.)
Good site and they DO have Nexus 4 options now.... There are actually a number of phones that don't have removable battery, the new HTC One, my older Xperia Sola .... all iPhones (but obviously they are not Android). That's just what I know, I would be that there would be plenty more without removable battery. Although some devices that do no have an easily removable battery do have options for replacement -- I replaced the battery on my TomTom Go930 device and had a better USB connector attached (after the original become defective). Cheers A.
participants (9)
-
Andrew McGlashan -
Anthony Hogan -
Brian May -
Carl Turney -
Hiddensoul (Mark Clohesy) -
Jason White -
Russell Coker -
Tom Wilkins -
Trent W. Buck