Lack of any insurance provider for iPad, iPhone or Smartphone in Singapore

I have subscribed to Zurich / Mobile cover, and had some sort of peace of mind. Especially with a thousand dollar gadget in my two young kids hands. Unfortunately they stopped renewing the contract, and I couldnt find any similar insurance options for the iPad.

I have tried my best to child proof by getting a survivor case (not exactly same but similar), but today the unfortunate thing happened.

Unfortunately have no choice but through it off. The repair from apple store costs me almost the price of a new ipad 16gb, while the other shops quoted me slightly lower than that. Wish I could have got something like endsleigh in SG.

But this reminds me once again of the dangers with gadgets and kids :)

Finding a good in ear earphones with mic for mobile phone and VoIP calls

I am really frustrated after my 6 months old Skullcandy earphone stopped working (only left side) and this is probably my 8th one the last two years. Most of the times, I end up buying through Amazon or online, so I could  count the number and amount of money wasted on ear phones. On the other hand, my trusted Creative Noise Cancelling headset  HN-900 is working flawlessly over three years. 

I do good care for headset and earphones and some hoe the earphones are always end up with faulty mic or failure on one side. 

So far I've used following and among them the best would be perhaps the Puregear. So here goes the list from Amazon

• Puregear Purebeats
• Noisehush NX80
• Puregear Purebeats
• Puregear Pureboom
• JVC-HA-FX3X
• Jbuds OEM
• Some cheap one for emergency
• Skullcandy

So the damage of over 200 for earphones..:( 

I am wondering if I could just buy some cheap ones as the lifetime seems to be the same but again, I use earphones for hours. So need comfortable ones.. Sad but no choice..

Jasmine - Youtube client on iPhone

I am a great fan of browser based stuff so I don't have to install a *special* app for doing the same task.

For example, the original Youtube app bundled with iOS (before iOS6) was a waste and it doesn't even offer HD content. On the other hand Safari lets you choose HD option.

Recently I see many people started using Jasmine. I was told that this is from Jason Morrissey (yeah, the guy behind Alien Blue) so thought of giving it a try.

I must say, the first look itself is pretty impressive. The interface is simple & elegant. The focus is on "search" functionality. I felt that somehow it is rather fast compared to browser based youtube, and also the playback is smooth.

Now the bad part, is you'll lose the options in Youtube. i.e. the browser based search queries, , long, recent, etc. Also it doesn't let you sort by date, popularity etc. So end up going back to browser based :)

However if there is an app which is simple, elegant & easy for youtube, then Jasmine will be at the top. You can try it @  iTunes.

iTunes link

Google Maps & Youtube in IOS6 or iPhone 5

If you guys are excited to upgrade to iOS6 or already did, then you must have realized that there is no Google MAPS & Youtube App.
Apple replaced google maps with their own maps app but this is not a good thing to me. I've used Google Maps for years and that can be a apple vs android thing to me. However Youtube is not a big issue and I've been using Youtube in Safari/Chrome for years. So the same thought came and it works on my iPad :)

So the useful part is HTML5 and all you need is to create a shortcut of maps.google.com and m.youtube.com on your home screen. This can be easily done by opening them in Safari or Chrome, then create a shrotcut.

I prefer Youtube on Safari because it offers me to select HD quality or normal quality; also the stock application doesn't offer much benefits.

But for Maps, my first experience on Safari is not that exciting. Chrome is great but still lacks the 'fastness' of stock maps app. This can be a wonderful interim solution while waiting for Google to release an app of maps. 

Unresponsive iPhone home button - Easy software fix if you are lucky.

Ok. First the disclaimer, hardware faults can't be solved. So if the button is damaged due to moisture or drop then you may have to make a trip to SingTel or Apple store.

My iPhone-4 started to behave weird, and this is when I started calling SingTel. As usual they wasted half an hour of my time before telling me that this must be routed to iPhone store. While planning the trip (to find the address) I searched and found this excellent trip from osxdaily.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/12/22/iphone-home-button-not-working-or-unresponsive-fix

Details are in the website. Trust me, you'd be surprised :) Atlteast to me, it helped me to avoid (or postpone) a trip to apple store.

Apple iOS release 5.1 (not 5.0.1 but real 5.1)

Just updated my iPhone to iOS 5.1. Main reason for the upgrade is to 'try' whether this solves my battery drain.
Ofcourse it will take couple of days before I can really fell the improvement (if any) but there are few useful updates caught my eye.

First one is the increase in 'app' download limit from current 20MB to 50MB. This is a big thing to me because whenever I update the app's the 'frustrating' popup comes and asks me to connect to Wi-Fi. Now I can forget this part most of the times.

Second is the "removal of photo from iCloud photo stream". In the past we can't remove a single photo. With 5.1 this is added. Lame but I am used to apple so never bothered about this. By the way I started to use Google+ for photo update so it is easy to share with friends :). So this is not a really big deal to me but I can clean up old 'pics'
[EDIT]: This is not really 'removing from iCloud but only from your iPhone". So if you happened to sync your iPhone & iPad to the same iCloud account there is no way you can remove it from iCloud :|


Third is the "camera shortcut" which is always present next to "slide to open" in lock screen.

[Update]


Surprisingly my batter life improved and now it can last one full day :)

Secondly the "push mail" seems to be improved. In the past I see delayed 'push' but now I can see the popup on my iPhone before it appears in my exchange.

So it looks like there are some good improvements in 5.1 (Singapore version)

SingTel 2G/3G BBOM or Data Network down..

I was in the office yesterday and seems SingTel Mobile BBOM was down again.. @ Tanjong Pagar to Suntec (CBD area) I couldn't connect.

This morning there was a slight problem but so far seems the problem resolved quite fast.

However right now (@1500 Hrs) I could connect to 3G + Data network but I can't browse any sites. I tried resetting the network settings & turn on/off the phone but still the same problem.

There was a old trick I remembered since Magix days. change the proxy.. So I did changed the APN settings and it started working :).. So e-ideas to internet on my iPhone resolved the problem. Though it did disabled my Personal Host Spot (reason here) it worked well.

Past links:

1.  Outage in Jan 2012

2. Outage in Sep 2011

iPhone - Personal Hot Spot Missing

Recently I've got few messages and comments on the Personal Hot spot thingy on iPhone4. Most of them are complaining how the hot spot went missing after the recent iOS upgrade (4.3.3) and calls to SingTel or Starhub are always telling them to reset the device.

First of all, we in Singapore are much "pampered" crowd. Places like US, Europe & AU the option to have "tethering" is a privilage and you'll be paying exorbitant prices (e.g. USD 45 for 4GB/Month). I know some of my friends are not very happy to see SingTel "limited" data bundle which stands at 30GB per month / SGD 15.

Coming to the point, the personal hot spot works on something called "tethering".
There are two different situations where the PHS end up missing.

1.First time usage (just go to settings and enable it)

2. When you change some of the carrier settings or network settings or APN settings
Solution is simple and simply reset the network settings.

Now let me explain why you need to reset. This is a standard defined in 3GPP and whenever the phone communicates to the network, they both try to agree on this option. So when you change the carrier settings/APN settings, the phone tries to get the information from operator network. However this is not really 'authorized' but we'll still do and when the phone tries to get the details from operator network, it ends up disabling the hot spot.

A reset will change the APN back to "e-ideas" with all default settings and Hot spot is back :)

Skype launches video calls on iPhone

It's just three days back I've mentioned about Skype Video calls on Phones. Now they've announced on iPhone. Great job guys and eagerly waiting for Android.

Now this is not going to be a good news for Mobile Operators. In Singapore I don't think the impact would be great but in Europe and developing countries this is going to affect a lot of operators. Given the small size of Singapore the main user group of Skype would be expats/foreigners. So I'd expect most of the calls happening from home/residential rather than over mobile phone. So the primary device still a notebook/pc while mobile can be used as an emergency device or backup device.

Source: Skype