Originally, I started writing this article about a year ago, right after I got the phone. Then I totally dropped the ball on it, thinking I would wait for the next update of Android. It’s been 2 updates and now I’m finally finishing this up. A lot has changed since the phone first came out over a year ago.

In the first 2 reviews, I discussed the hardware of the Samsung Epic 4G.  This time, I’ll review the software, Android OS, and Google Marketplace.

Let’s start with the Android pre-installed apps that comes with the phone out of the box. Since Android is made by Google, it’s a no-brainer that it works great with Google Mail, Google Maps, Google Voice (more on that later), and anything else Google that you can think of. On the other hand, if you don’t like Google products for some reason, you are not going to like it.

The other usual apps are also included, like a calendar, calculator, memo, voicemail, and you can download the essentials like Sprint Navigation, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Originally, it also came with an alarm clock but in the latest Android update (2.3.5 Gingerbread), the alarm clock is inside the clock app now. Of course, there are tons of free alarm clock apps you can download from the marketplace. There’s a free one called Alarm Clock Plus that works great.

When you get a call and they leave a message, you will get a text transcribed version of the message. Depending on the ambient noise, the caller’s accent, and other factors, the transcription can be anything from great to marginal.

Then, you can listen to the actual message or if the transcribed version is good enough, you don’t even have to bother listening to the original voice message. I really like this feature because this allows you to check your messages anywhere by reading and without worrying about who might be listening.

If you have Google Voice, it works very nicely with Android and you can set it up to prompt you to ask you which phone number to use when calling out or texting. You’ll see a message like the one below.

Google Voice

On my iPhone, I never used Google Voice because it was too hard to use but on Android, it’s a snap. And Sprint is also starting to roll out a feature where you can transfer your Sprint number to Google Voice or vice versa.

On the Epic, touch and hold the home icon at the bottom of your phone to bring up a list of recently used apps. This is the Android version of multi-tasking. Like the iPhone fake multi-tasking, Androids version is similar in that it’s not real multi-tasking. It’s more like easily switching between apps that are loaded and suspended while another app is running. Only the now sold-to-HP Palm WebOS had true multi-tasking.

But I digress.

Apps

If instead of touching one of the icons of a previously launched app, you touch “Task Manager”, you get a more detailed list of the “running” apps as shown below. Note that this screen capture is from the original version of Android that came with the phone. The new version looks slightly different but you get the idea.

Task

From this screen, you can end an app that you don’t need “running” and it will release that memory back to Android. You can also end all apps by touching “End All”. You don’t have to bother with all this techno mumbo-jumbo if you just want to use apps and not worry about the memory it’s using.

However, after a while, you will notice that things start to slow down and sometimes this causes some apps to crash because there’s not enough memory. I’ve noticed that in the latest version (Gingerbread), there seems to be more crashes than before where I have to take the battery out to re-boot because the power button is frozen too.

One of my biggest complaints I had with the original Android version was that the phone log did not tell you how long the calls were and you had to download a free app to do that. However, in the Gingerbread version, you can click on the phone call in the log and the detail page will tell you the duration of the call now.

Remember also that Adobe Flash does work in Android, whereas it will apparently never work on the iPhone. But Adobe has announced that they will eventually be  letting Flash die a slow death as HTML5 will replace it in the future.

One of the best features on the Epic is the built in version of Swype. In case you’re not familiar with it, when you are typing on the on-screen keyboard, instead of lifting your finger after each letter, you drag your finger to the next letter and keep going in this manner. This works so well, I hardly ever use the physical keyboard of the Epic. As a matter of fact, if the iPhone came with Swype, I would switch back again. More on Swype in the next post.

My biggest complaint about Android is the inconsistent user interface. Both Palm (now HP) and Apple are very picky about the UI of every single app that is being submitted for approval. Apparently, not so much with Android. Many apps work so differently from each other, it’s hard to get used to. It allows for some cool innovation but also can be confusing to some users.

One of the most frustrating aspect of this is that you can keep pressing the “Back” button to return to a previous screen, but if you do it once too many times, the application will exit. Some will ask if you want the app will exit, but many do not and simply dump you out. Very frustrating. Every time you press “Back,” you’re always scared that you might accidentally exit the app.

Finally, although the Apple store has more apps, the Android marketplace has tons of apps, many of them free (including Angry Birds). It appears that the developers have decided that iPhone users will gladly pay 99 cents but Android users will not pay, so it’s ad supported. In any case, for the most part, any good app that’s on iPhone will also be available on Android and I have no complaints with the apps that are available for this phone. I have noticed that sometimes Android apps will come out but it will not be available for the Epic right away and I’ll have to wait, while people with other Android phones are enjoying the new app.

All in all, I’ve been using the Epic for over a year now and have had no problems with the hardware or software. Some of my friends have moved on to bigger and better phones but I’ll stick it out a little longer.

It’s amazing how ThinkGeek has used rapid prototyping to bring a prototype to life so quickly.

I want a version of Siri running on my computer interfaced to my home control system and this Hal 9000 box. Or not.

Brookstone has a new cool gadget that a friend of mine bought. It’s a remote control wireless tank with a built in camera. They are calling it the “Rover Spy Tank.” Nothing new about a remote control tank but this one is controlled by your iPod, iPhone or iPad and you can see what the tank is seeing on the screen. Very cool.

Rover in action

When they call it “spy,” they aren’t kidding. Not only does it have video, it has audio, can take still pictures and has IR for night vision. Why didn’t they have this thing when I was a kid, or even in college? I would have had so much fun with it. It’s like something out of one of those “Nerd” movies. Of course, I’d probably would have been expelled from school.

Unfortunately, the app on the iPhone seemed to get locked up sometimes and I would have to close the app and re-start it to get it work again. I’m sure they’ll have an update soon for that. You wouldn’t want your Spy Tank to get stuck in the girls’ locker room.

After my epic fail with the Archerfish security system, I went looking for something better. One thing that I noticed was that the WiFi connection that Archerfish was using was very unreliable and would go down a lot. So this time, I looked for a wired solution.

What I came up with was the new Logitech Alert Security System. Logitech had an older system which apparently they are slowly killing off to move to this new system.

AC power (left), Camera (center) and and Network adapter (right) - $300

This new system uses HomePlug network which uses your electrical wiring and makes it a wired network. Basically, you plug the HomePlug box into the power outlet, then plug a cable from this box to your router. Next, you plug the AC power box/HomePlug to the wall where you want your camera to go, and plug a cable from that box to your camera. There are no extra cables for power as the network cable is also used for power.

Each of the HomePlug boxes have a power and active LED lights which can be turned off with a switch on the side. This is a good feature to have because the flashing lights can become very annoying after a little while.

Indoor camera

The indoor camera shown above looks more like a webcam than a security camera. There is a microphone, a very wide angle lens and an LED indicator at the bottom. The LED is programmable to be off, on, or blink when motion is detected. If you are using this to see if your nanny is doing something wrong, you might turn off the blinking LED.

The camera comes with a desktop plastic base/holder, mounts that allow you to put it on the wall (like a traditional security camera), and suction cups to stick it to a window. I’ve used both the base and the wall mount with some problems. The base only allows for a small up/down positioning so basically you’re stuck with the angle that it forces upon you. The wall mount also does not allow for all positions depending on how you use the mount. You can force the mount to work but it’s not clear if that’s the way it was designed to be used.

Unlike the Archerfish, installation was fairly easy. After installing the software from CD, I followed the instructions everything worked the first time. The included software is the Alert Commander which allows you to look at live video streaming from the camera. You can have up to 6 cameras, including outdoors cameras with night vision (IR lights) which automatically switches modes as needed. One quick note is that there is a click sound when the IR lights come on and off. This should not be a problem for most people but I wanted to mention it.

Alert Commander

This app also allows you to set up to 16 areas for the motion detection and emailing a photo plus SMS messaging alert when motion is detected. This feature is not as sophisticated as the Archerfish which has smarts to detect the difference between cars, people and pets. In the Logitech system, you can set the sensitivity and the area, but it will not know the difference between a car and the delivery guy, or a human (intruder) and your cat.

Timeline close-up

Each camera comes with a 2Gig microSD card (expandable to 23Gigs) which can store up to about a week of video. When you launch the Commander app, it downloads all the videos from the cameras to the hard drive for backup. Once it’s on your computer, you can view any of the videos which are arranged by date/time as shown above. At this point, you can also save or delete a clip. This is one of the functions that I was not able to get working on the Archerfish.

One big thing to note is that as of this writing, the system only works with PCs. This could be a deal breaker for many people but not for me.

The add on indoor camera costs $230 and outdoor camera costs $280. It’s cheaper for the add-on than the entire system because they only come with the camera side without the computer side. Those prices are not cheap because there’s brains and memory inside each camera and the data is digital, and not analog sent over a network.

Since getting my initial camera, I’ve added one outdoor camera and a second indoor camera. When I moved cameras around, I did have a little problem setting up the new cameras and had to reboot the cameras to get the time to be correct. Also, initially it can take a while for your computer to “find” all the cameras that are connected. Once done, it’s only a few seconds at most.

There is also a smart phone app (for iPhone and Android) that allows you to see live streaming video from anywhere. However, I’ve found that about 50% of the time, at least one of the 3 cameras that I have setup does not connect properly and cannot be viewed.

If you pay monthly, you can also change settings like in the Commander app remotely and watch recorded video (as opposed to live video). So far, I’ve haven’t needed any of these extra features and have not signed up. However, I could see how you  may need to watch recorded video remotely.

For people that want to check on their kids, nannies, or delivery guy, this is a perfect solution. There are no wires to lay in your house but the power line connection is a lot more reliable than the WiFi solutions. However, this may not be the perfect solution for people who are trying to catch burglars in the act if they are familiar with your security system. Of course, any security system can be circumvented with the right knowledge.

As for me, I’ve been very happy with my system so far. I like that fact that I can add cameras without having to do any wiring and getting SMS text messages when motion is detected for free, and being able to watch live video from my phone.

So far, the only small gripes I have are that even after playing with the sensitivity, you do get many more false positives than my old system. However, I prefer this to the opposite of missing something important, which was happening with the Archerfish.

Until I find something better, this will be my system of choice.

Boeing 787

After years of delay, Boeing is set to deliver their newest long range, 2 engine jet-liner, called the “Dreamliner” to ANA in Japan on September 28, after leaving Everett, Washington the day before. Let’s hope there will be no more delays or this plane will be known as the “Vaporliner” instead.

Because the entire plane is made from composite material, it is lighter and uses less fuel, is quieter and has special automated controls for a smoother ride during turbulence.

787 Interior lighting

There are tons of cool gadgets on this plane including LED mood lighting to simulate natural lighting, and super large windows that can be tinted darker by the passenger. On top of that, they have new technology to keep the air cleaner than older planes.

Boeing is pretty much betting their future on this plane, at least for the next decade. If this doesn’t fly, they will be in serious trouble.

For a gadget freak like me, this plane has everything to entice me to fly. I may have to travel to Japan just for that reason.

Readers of this blog know that I’ve been trying to get rid of body hair without much success. Since the laser was too painful for me, I’ve decided to go back to the old fashioned methods of shaving.

In trying to find the best body shaver for me, I picked 2 popular ones. Shown below are the contenders: Norelco Bodygroom Men’s Total Body Grooming System (left – $40 at Best Buy) and Braun Cruzer 5 Body Cruzer 5 Body Shaver (right – $60, $50 on Amazon). Both can be used in the shower and on your body.

Norelco (left) and Braun (right)

As you can see below, the Norelco has 2 trimmers with a flat shaver in the middle. The trimmers are okay but the flat shaver really works well and is the best part of this shaver.

Top of Norelco

Shown below is the top of the Braun shaver. As you can see, the bottom is the trimmer and the top is a traditional multi-blade razor that can be adjusted up or down. The razor is actually the Gillette Fusion, which sells for about $15 on Amazon. In the down position, it does not get used. In the middle position, both the trimmer and the razor are used simultaneously, saving time. In the up position, you can just use the razor without the trimmer.

For body hair of short length, using the trimmer and razor together works best.

Top of Braun

Shown below is the Braun power button and the LED indicating when it’s being charged. The Norelco does not have an indicator when being charged.

Braun - LED

As you can see below, the Norelco’s charger is much larger and has metal contacts, whereas the Braun’s charger is tiny in comparison and uses induction without any contacts. Also, the Norelco is super light and falls over a lot and the cord is unnecessarily long. The Braun is heavy and will not fall over and the cord is the right length.

Chargers - Norelco (left), Braun (right)

After a few months of testing, I’ve come to the following conclusion. Generally, the Braun is a much better designed product. The Norelco retains water inside the head and will leak out and would not be good for traveling, along with all the other design flaws this has.

Basically, it’s a no-brainer in picking which is better. The Braun wins except for one small difference. The flat shaver on the Norelco does work well. This is no different from any other regular flat electric shaver but the Braun does not have it. It only has the trimmer and a traditional razor.

So for now, I’m using the Braun but sometimes I’ll use the Norelco if I really need to be smooth. But if I had to choose only one, the Braun wins hands down.

As I mentioned before, I’m upgrading my security system at my place, first with a new electronic lock, and next I wanted a video monitoring system. There are different kinds of systems and the cheap ones require you to wire up your home with physical wires. That was not an option for me.

Most systems I looked at also required a DVR of some type that records the analogue video onto a hard drive which can be viewed later. The problem with that is you have to also have an alarm system with the video or by the time you realize there was a break-in, the only thing the video is good for is for the cops to review after the fact.

Even a paranoid guy like me has limits and having a full-blown alarm system and video system was more than I wanted or needed. The other problem with a DVR is that to do it properly, the DVR must be in a very safe location or it would be too easy to destroy or steal and that would totally defeat the purpose of having a DVR.

After some digging, I came across the Archerfish Solo video monitoring system which is a stand-alone unit that uses standard WiFi instead of a proprietary wireless system like many other systems. Moreover, the video is sent to a server at Archerfish so there is no need to worry about maintaining a DVR or protecting it from destruction.

The MSRP for this unit is $349 and comes with one 2GB MicroSD card for storing the video. As you can see below, compared to industrial security video cameras, it’s not big but compared to home monitoring systems, it’s on the larger side.

Close-up of lens

The device has all the smarts built into the stand-alone camera unit, including the firmware that allows the unit to be programmed via WiFi over the Internet. Not only that but you can tell the unit to look only in certain areas of the screen, and look for people, vehicles, or any motion.

The brains to distinguish between people and vehicles is Solo’s selling point since many people have this unit mounted towards their driveway where cars may be coming and going all day. You can tell Solo to only alert you when you see a person coming to the house.

Sample installation from Archerfish

Although the WiFi connection can be wireless (or wired), the power cable does need to be connected to an AC outlet. Therefore, if you are mounting this outside, you will probably need to drill holes somewhere to get the power out there from inside the house.

So far, I was sold on this device and decided to get it before my long trip to Hawaii so that I could monitor my place via the Internet while I was gone. I wish I could report that hookup was a no brainer, but I can’t.

Once connected to the Internet, the instructions are to use your computer and browser to connect to the Archerfish website to setup your Solo device. One of the first indications that something was wrong was the still image that was shown was simply black with no image. Undeterred, I continued with the installation and got to the point where the firmware was to be upgraded via the Internet as shown below.

Firmware update problems

Unfortunately, even after leaving the download going overnight, it never finished. Next, I called Archerfish customer support and was told that my WiFi router was not compatible and I would have to buy a new one. No problem. You don’t have to ask me twice to buy new gadgets. So I went out and bought the new Linksys E2000 WiFi router the next day.

As I suspected, although my new router was much better than my old one, it had nothing to do with the download not working. Back to calling customer service, and although every person that I talked to was very friendly, nobody was able to help me other than to tell me that they would look into it from their server side and get back to me.

Days turned to weeks and I was starting to run out of time to install this unit before my trip. I called customer service again and was told that they were still looking into the problem. At this point, having the technical background that I have, I already knew that my unit was broken and needed to be replaced. However, they were not yet convinced of that at Archerfish and needed to do more “testing.”

One thing that bothered me was they would always tell me that they would either email me or call me to tell me the status and never did. Nothing. Not even to tell me nothing was going on.

Unfortunately, nothing was done before my trip and so I did not have any security by Internet while I was gone. Scary stuff for a paranoid guy like me.

After my trip, even though I no longer needed the product, I decided I was going to make this product work by hook or by crook and kept calling their customer service. Every time I called, I always got a very sympathetic and patient person on the line but nobody was able to help me. What seems to be the problem is the lack of diagnostic training. But I really can’t fault this little company too much for their lack of training since it was no worse than Dell or even HP, and those guys have a lot more money. It’s hard to get good help.

If anybody would like to get a good lesson from this customer service problem, I think this particular problem that I was having should have been used for training. Since it was taking so long, their customer service computer system should have automatically had a problem solver alerted to this via email and this person should have called me and diagnosed the problem with one of their regular customer service person on the line listening. The purpose would have been to train the customer service person on a live call to show them how to diagnose this properly.

But I digress.

After over 8 weeks of calls and 135 hours and 18 seconds of talking to customer service (yes, I added up the numbers), I finally got them to agree that the unit was broken and they would send me out a new unit. Wow. This was a record for me with any gadget that I have ever bought in my life. They should have sent me a new unit the second day.

After getting the new unit, the new firmware downloaded in 10 minutes and everything was working within an hour. Of course, this is what should have happened months ago before my trip.

For the most part, everything works as advertised, with a few exceptions. Sometimes, I do not get alerted when a person is moving in front of the camera. I suspect this is either because it is too dark, the person is not at the correct angle, or they are moving too fast. In any case, this can be solved by changing the settings to alert me when anything is moving. Of course, if you have pets, this would not work properly.

Another little bug I noticed is shown below where when trying to create a video clip, I get an error that the clip cannot be created. I’m not sure but I think this is probably a firmware bug.

Error

Also, I get a lot of “Poor Video” errors as shown below. Again, I’m not sure what is causing this and it doesn’t seem to be a problem most of the time. Only once did I get a low resolution video sent to me instead of the regular resolution video.

Poor video

By the way, if you are thinking of getting this unit, I should note that the service where you get an email or SMS text with video is not free. There is a monthly $5 charge for this service. However, you get 3 months of this service for free when you get the unit.  If you don’t need to be alerted, there is no fee to be connected to their server.

Since it took me months to get this unit working, I asked the customer service person to extend my free trial so that I would not have to pay $5 yet since I have not had any chance to check out the system. The really nice customer service person told me that this was no problem and that it would be extended at no charge.

Of course, I should have known that was going to be a lie and sure enough they started charging me already with no extension. I guess that was their parting kick to my groin after they had already kicked me to the ground.

I’ve switched to another system and no longer use this unit. More on that next time.

As everyone that reads this blog knows by now, I’m a victim of advertising and infomercials. One night, I was watching one and saw a home laser hair removal system from Tria. Now you’re asking yourselves right now, why does this guy need this?

Well, really I don’t. But sometimes things get bushy down there and being the porno watcher that I am, sometimes I feel like things need to be hairless. Yes, I know. Too much information.

But I digress.

Anyway, I was getting tired of shaving, for the same reason many women get tired of it, and saw this product and thought I’d give it a try.

They actually have a newer version that’s only $395 and is just one unit. The one I got a while ago, was more expensive and as you can see from the picture above, it’s two units.

On this version, you first use the little unit to determine if your skin color/hair color is acceptable. Your skin color has to be light and your hair color has to be dark for the computer to be able to “see” your hair location. Once the smaller unit accepts your condition, you put it against the larger unit and the smaller unit tells the larger unit to allow the laser to function.

The actual laser is fairly big and heavy. But keep in mind what is really in there. There’s a real laser that zaps hair follicles and a computer that controls the aim of the laser. If you think about it, it’s some high tech sci-fi-ish stuff here.

I don’t want to waste any more of your time reading this article because I tried using it and it was too painful for a wimp like me. The FAQ says that it feels like a rubber band hitting you. That’s true. The only problem is, it “hits” you many times for each tiny area. Then you move the laser and it does it again.  Even though there are different settings, even at the lowest setting, it was too painful for me. After only a couple of minutes, I was done.

It’s pretty clear that women do other things like waxing that are as painful, or perhaps more painful than this laser, so for them, it’s probably nothing. For a wimp like me, there’s no way I can use this because you have to do it multiple times before the hair starts to go away. I couldn’t even do it once.

So this really isn’t a review, since I never got to the point where I can tell if hair was going away. Instead, it’s more like a warning to some people that this is very painful. If you have a low threshold for pain like me, don’t get this laser.

It’s not enough that everybody and his brother has a camera/camcorder built into their mobile smart phones, and uploading their boring videos to Youtube, now comes this set of sunglasses that will automatically stream live video via your smart phone to your “favorite social media” website, according to ZionEyes.

It’s not out yet and although they are taking pre-orders, the business is using a donation system to fund their project so I’m not sure if this will ever come to market.

But if this thing ever makes it, you know people are going to be doing some bad things with it at concerts, strip clubs, and other places you shouldn’t be recording videos. But it could also get the next Rodney King video while you get your next ticket, so there’s that.