Ranting Kenya

Just a quick note with my continued use of Deepfish on my Moto Q.

I’ve noticed that one feature that I haven’t seen touted anywhere is that webpages render WAY faster. In Pocket IE I’ve probably waited 30 seconds or more for a page to load. In Deepfish, I don’t think I’ve had one run longer than 10 seconds. That alone is awesome.

My only reservation so far has been the zoom interface. The box accelerates quite quickly. I’m getting the hang of it, so this issue is becoming less of one every day. It is a beta, I’m reasonably certain this will be tweaked before the final version. Perhaps they’ll allow you to adjust the rate of acceleration in the future.

Still loving Deepfish though.

For all you smartphone users that are forced to use Pocket IE (like me), this is a product to check out. I’ve tried installing minimoz, with no luck, and I don’t want to pay for Opera’s mobile browser. So I’ve been using Pocket IE exclusively for the last year. It’s pretty… meh..

Microsoft Deepfish however is another story. For those of your all excited iPhone’s web browsing ability, you should check out Deepfish. I remember seeing the video on the web for Deepfish before the iPhone announcment. So I don’t know if Apple or Microsoft came up with the idea for the method of web browsing.

Basically, rather than needing to load the whole page, and scroll left and right, up and down, it loads the entire web page in a zoomed-out view. Seems the rendering engine is FAR superior to pocket IE’s. The pages look like they should most of the time.

In the zoomed out view, you can then move a box around the page, and that is the area that you can zoom in on. Images look good, pages basically stream to you, but you save so much time not scrolling around trying to figure out where Pocket IE put the link you needed.

I’ve only been using it for a short time, but so far I’d give it a thumbs up. I’ll post again with further impressions in the near future.

My Q has been having a problem since last weekend. Virtually everytime I picked it up after not using it for a few minutes, I frequently found it turned off.

I consulted some message boards and even the Motorola website to try to figure out the problem. Most posts I found suggested taking the smartphone back to retailer (within 14 days of purchase) and getting a new one.

Well I’ve had mine for months now, so that was out of the question.

Around the same time, I noticed my battery performance had suddenly been cut nearly in half (and about 1/4 of it’s initial performance months ago). Lithium ion batteries only have so many charge cycles and then they basically lose all performance.

Since my Q came with a second battery, I decided before I totally freak out about warranties etc. I’d charge up the other unused battery and see if it was a battery performance issue.

Well today was my first day with the new battery, and so far (fingers crossed) the problem seems to be solved. Maybe all those other Moto Q users (and likely other smartphones) who are having this same issue can save themselves some time and the hassle of a loaner phone by trying this out too.

In general, I’m a fairly well connected guy. I hear about most bits of technology, gadgets, cell phones, video games and the like well in advance of their public unveilings.

Because of this, I’m also well aware of Canada’s delay behind the US when it comes to new technologies and services. When the US annouced way back when (seems like forever now) that you could keep your mobile phone number across different carriers, I was excited to see that rolled out in Canada as well. I searched the net for information, but found none. As per usual, I was upset with the delay.

Now I have the Moto Q (which I waited extra time for in Canada too), which I purchased at a “reasonable” price with a 3 year contract. That was about 6 months ago. Now guess what? Wireless portability comes to Canada. So I’m locked into Telus, when I want to be on Bell’s network.

And what makes this all worse, Bell has announced free in-network calling. FREE. Telus? Nothing.

While I may be willing to stick out this contract since it will be expensive to leave, the first carrier that offers an unlimited EVDO data plan for 99 dollars or less will have my business the next day. Period. I would have even changed my phone number for that.

I hate to give a product such as the iPhone more time than it has already gotten, but whatever.

It seems Apple’s new killer product will be coming to Rogers wireless in Canada (I know, old news). Personally, I can only think of one person still using Rogers as their wireless carrier, and that’s mostly because of his work and he’s addicted to the crackberry. On a side note, I am writing this from my moto Q.

Bell Canada and Telus dominate the wireless market by my count. But with Rogers offering the iPhone to gadget loving Canadians, will it be enough to grab more market share? It’s likely that to expand the iPhone’s market share, Apple will offer another version that runs on the other carrier’s networks. The question is when. Is there going to be enough lead-time before the inevitable widespread iPhone availability? Somehow I doubt it.

The iPhone for all its glory, is still a first generation product. It will have its issues. By the time they work out some of these issues, I believe other carriers will carry the device, and it will probably be cheaper than it is today. I’ll wait until my contract is over before I go for it (2.5 years left). By then, this whole thing will have hopefully sorted itself out.