Connecting to the 21st Century

My relationship to mobile phones over the years has been a mixture between vague mistrust to outright hostility. Initially, with simple mobiles offering just calls and text I still rather liked the idea of being “out” although I could see the utility of being able to call someone without having to search for a public call box first. Of course, this all relied on the ability of the phone to maintain a charge for the duration of the day and with my first, rather disastrous, venture into the world of the smartphone this certainly wasn’t the case. It was actually after reverting to using a feature phone that I got into the habit of carrying the thing with me and having it switched on. I have also found that I am now in the habit of checking emails, Facebook, the news and sport whilst out and, whilst the feature phone does do this, it doesn’t do it that elegantly. In recent months I have been coming around to the idea of getting an Android phone again.

In part, I was won around to the idea of a new smart phone by the success I had with my work’s Windows phone. As a business phone, these are superb as they integrate seamlessly with all my other workplace systems and offer useful feature like satellite navigation when out and about. Importantly, the battery will last for a week between charges with light use. Unfortunately, the number of third-party apps is limited with most offering a choice between Android or iPhone downloads. Many will still have a web page that can be accessed but it is clumsy through a phone browser. Since I like to keep my work and private phones separate, an Android phone seemed like a good choice.

My basic requirements were that it should be reasonably cheap, supportable, have a good battery life and reasonable camera. I was also coloured in my choice by the fact that my son has had lots of good things to say about his Motorola Moto G phone so I went for the latest iteration of that. In fact they do several versions ranging from the big to the completely unwieldy. I ended up going for the smallest and cheapest in that range, the Moto G4 Play, and so far I’ve been rather taken with it.

Being a glass half full sort of person, I suppose I should start with the downside. It is still quite big and it is a noticeable lump to be carrying around in my pocket compared to my old Nokia feature phone. In fact it is even bigger than my Windows phone although compensating for that with a slightly larger screen. Charging the phone takes up to 4 hours with the supplied charger but the battery life seems reasonable: it isn’t quite up there with the Windows phone (although, in fairness, I have been prodding the thing endlessly since I’ve had it) but it lasted for the whole day even including long periods of use as a sat-nav. Looking at the power usage, by far the largest drain (at around 25%) was for powering the screen so I’ve now enabled the auto-dimming function on that one. So far the bulk and range anxiety have been the only disadvantages so far.

It doesn’t come with too many apps pre-installed (which I am told is a good thing) but I did set up my email accounts as soon as I had it. It’s a bit different from the Windows phone but, as I had set up my contacts in Gmail before buying the phone, the set-up was swift and relatively pain free. I then went for a few news and sport apps from the likes of the BBC and Guardian (although I have yet to find the Telegraph one as I rather like their film reviews). These work much better than the browser based ones. Next was the Sat Nav. It comes with Google Maps built in but I had been warned that this could be fairly disastrous for data use so I went for the Here WeGo application (surprisingly free) which is the Android equivalent of the Here Drive application on Windows. It works surprisingly well.

Having set everything up and purchased a leather case (which is very nice) and car-vent mounting device (which is somewhat less successful), I headed off on a long weekend trip down to Liverpool. I was a bit worried about how the data usage would compare but there are many free wireless points available at service stations, on public transport  and in many pubs and restaurants. Many of these require a sign up to what will presumably be an endless stream of advertising and I do wonder how secure the connections are but then there is no such thing as a free lunch. The sat nav really came into its own in Liverpool city centre as the public transport was chaotic with the underground being off at the moment and the replacement bus services going through some unfamiliar territory. Over the three days I used 83MB worth of data from my mobile provider which is higher than the feature phone although not excessively so.

One of the other big features that I did want on the phone was a decent camera. The man in the shop warned me that the camera was “only” 8 Megapixels but I did point out that this is actually 4 times the amount of the cameras on the Hubble Space telescope. Of course, Megapixels are no match for good optics and NASA would not have spent billions putting that thing into orbit if they should achieve the same with a £130 phone camera. To see what the real-world performance is like I took the phone for a test run at the Wirral Transport Museum (which, incidentally, is well worth a visit if one can deploy the Sat Nav to negotiate the labyrinthine backstreets of Birkenhead). Given that I had a streaming cold and wobbly hands on the day I was quite pleased with the results:

Wirral Transport Museum - Austin 1800 (I remember these being far rustier back in the day)

Wirral Transport Museum - Triumph Dolomite which was made at the nearby (and since defunct) Speke car plant in Liverpool

Wirral Transport Museum - A Lambretta scooter. My dad used to have one like this.

Wirral Transport Museum - trams. They also have working trams which go to the nearby ferry terminal.

So, overall I’m rather sold on the whole smartphone idea. Contrary to what this may sound like I’m not really such a luddite: I like to see any technology behaving in a life-enhancing way rather than becoming yet another burden. No doubt more expensive phones will have bigger and better features and I am sure that some power users (games players, for example) would benefit from a more expensive unit. Phones can get very expensive – a top of the range Apple iPhone will cost 7 or 8 times as much as my humble Motorola and they are, no doubt, an excellent product but for that much I would be expecting some fairly amazing features: time-travel or something. For simply connecting to the 21st Century there are cheaper and perfectly acceptable options available.