The benefits of future-proofing your phone...

For a while now, my phone has been acting up a little. I'd already addressed the two-year-old degrading battery (it wasn't able to hold a consistently long charge any more, which is fairly normal for regularly-charged batteries) by replacing it for a new one, but there were other problems to contend with; Some apps had been locking up, others falling over. It was all down to a lack of available space on the device storage, both onboard (32gb) and on the storage card (another 32gb).

There are only so many things you can do in these situations, and I'd done most of those by yesterday; those were, in no particular order:

• Deleting unused or seldom-used apps;
• Deleting old photos (I use Dropbox to back them up, so nothing's been lost);
• Clearing out old data (pruning).

But it was clear yesterday that I had to do one last thing. I got a bigger storage card. The phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, running Android, is capable of addressing a maxim card size of 64gb. So, I went looking.

A LOT of high street tech shops were asking silly money for both branded and unbranded kit, so I began looking online instead. However, I wasn't about to go to e-bay for this, being mission-critical kit (some things, yeah, I'll use e-bay, but not vital electronics like this, as there are too many knock-offs). Amazon, however, stepped up nicely.

With Amazon, you can generally be safe in the knowledge that even their third-party 'marketplace' concession retailers have an assured supply chain to the brand-name kit. In this case, I found a 64gb microSD card from Samsung listed for under FIFTEEN QUID?! Wow. I snapped that one up for same-day delivery faster than you could say "Cool!"

Amazingly, it arrived by 6.30 p.m.! Good Job, Amazon Logistics! :D

It's a Samsung-branded 64gb class 10 microSD card, and was in the proper packaging, WITH hologram. It had Japanese printing on the packaging, nothing surprising there, it was likely a grey import, hence the price. I have no problem with that for simple tech like this.

So, I set-to immediately and backed up the old card (I'd done this a couple of days ago already, but it's a good habit to get into when swapping around storage media.

I then de-mounted the old 32Gb card, installed the new 64gb one, mounted it, formatted it just like you're supposed to using the phone, and that's when I hit a hiccup. The phone did not now want to talk to my computer. So, I tried putting the card directly into the card slot on the laptop (via a card adaptor). No dice, it couldn't read it. So, back into the phone, and try again. No joy.

Time to check the old internet. And came up successful in my search for a solution. Seems that occasionally, when changing cards, the interface settings get upset. So, I confirmed it to be set to 'USB Mass Storage Device' instead of 'MTP Device', and we were back on the rails again. Nice :)

So, I copied the backup of the 32 gig cad onto the new card, did some more general data pruning, moved a few on-board apps to the card, and whoopee - I've got back close to 15 gigs of space on the on-board storage on the phone, and still have over 40 gigs of space on the new card :) I call that a win, folks :D

As a result, this phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 3), which was 3G (4G-capable) when I got it, and which three months later was software-enabled to 4G (UK Three network), has probably another year to two years of practical life left in it (by which time, chances are some form of 4.5G or 5G will be on the horizon, if not in service already) :)

This is another reason why I buy phones with card slots and removable batteries :) It's called Future-proofing a phone ;)

Also, a hint - take regular back-ups of your data, whether it be a phone or a computer; you NEVER know when you might need to access those backups!

The cessation of unlimited tethered mobile broadband, Three, and EE...

For the last couple of years, I've been enjoying the benefits of having  unlimited tethering through my mobile phone; this has enabled me to have a very reliable broadband connection to the internet on my notebook, in my rented accommodations (no access to unlimited landline broadband, sadly).

Unfortunately, that's coming to an end, as Three, having halted new unlimited tethering contracts just after I signed up for my one, is now withdrawing the remainder of these contracts.

So, I've had to go looking for a high-throughput data contract. Three didn't offer anything close to what I needed, and there being no other providers offering contracts with similar services to the one I've had up until now, I've had to compromise. As a result, with both a mobile phone service contract, as well as a mobile data service contract, I'll be paying close to twice what I've been paying, for a fairly thick slice less of the data that I've been using, sadly. Never the less, I consider the new contract I just signed with EE for mobile Broadband services to be the best of a bad situation, and collected a MyFi router from Carphone Warehouse on the Purley Way in Croydon, today.

It's a Huawei e5573s-320. The benefit of this model, over others, is that you CAN plug in an external antenna, as there are jacks for this in the side of the unit - and I've got such an antenna inbound from Amazon UK, which should be here tomorrow.

Footprint-wise, it's remarkably small - length and width are slightly bigger than a credit card, although it's thicker of course: 84mm L x 58mm W x 15mm D.

Performance-wise, even indoors, in a notably difficult place to find a signal, is good - I got full strength 3G, and one bar of 4G, right on top of the printer on my desk. With the external antenna I have on the way, I should get an even better 4G signal - and the benefit is that I can stick both into my laptop bag, and get a decent chance at getting good signals wherever there's an EE service. I count that as an advantage, as for the last couple of years, I've only had access to Three services, and there are places where you cannot get a decent Three signal, where EE have good presence, and vice verse.

One nice surprise was that when I plugged it into my USB hub to charge it, it took less than an hour to top up to full charge, meaning that I could get to grips with using it in very short order. Imagine my pleasant surprise to find, that when I turned on my notebook, it connected via USB immediately to the MyFi router - as far as I can tell, that's apparently an undocumented feature, and a very nice surprise, meaning that I can switch off the WLAN WiFi service on the unit, in favour of a wired connection to it instead - there are situations where this would be a definite advantage, such as in high-density wireless environments, etc., where a stronger signal (and thus less battery time) would be needed to reliably connect with the device - having the capability to hard-connect to it is therefore a good thing.

I'll be looking to convert my existing Three contract to a rolling SIM-Only deal in the next few days, which should be somewhat cheaper than the alternative they have tried to offer me (not an all-you-can-eat plan, with a remarkably small amount of data allotment). If I can't get the plan I want, then I'll jump the Three ship, and go elsewhere. I'm very happy with the phone I have, and as it's now at end-of-contract, this opens up a fair few options for me.

More on this in due course :)

The party's now private: Three UK ends all-you-can-eat uncapped data for new contracts.

Well, I suppose the party had to end sometime. Three UK are not offering unlimited - excuse me, all-inclusive  - uncapped mobile data any more.

I went to their service for two reasons: Better overall coverage in the places I generally frequent, and All-You-Can-eat data, which was not capped in any way shape or form, so as to cut my comms costs in half, as per this blant entry.

Well, it's too late for you if you haven't jumped on that band wagon. They've quietly changed the bundles they offer. Now, if you want to tether your machine to your phone, there will be a 2Gb cap on the monthly amount of data that it consumes. As they say in their brochure on the topic:

Your data allowance can be used as a personal hotspot (we used to call this tethering) – if  you choose a plan with all-you-can-eat data, you can use up to 2GB of this allowance each month as a personal hotspot.

Note that they make no difference between the types of Wi-Fi or hard-wired tethering - excuse me, personal hotspot - or how they will determine this is occurring; presumably some form of monitoring software that you can't remove will be installed before you receive your new phone, as I cannot figure out, without some form of packet sniffing (where the content of what you are viewing is monitored in real time) occurring. As for sim-only contracts, who knows how they'll determine if you're tethered to a PC or not.

So, the party just turned private. If you're in, you've got it. If not, you missed out: You cannot get the One Plan-style uncapped contracts any more.

But here's the thing. If you're on one of the new sim-only contracts, and instead of putting the SIM card in a phone, you opt to leave it in a 3G or 4G-capable tablet or notebook, how the heck will they know it's not a phone? And will they cap you at 2Gigs?

I sure hope they got this thought all the way through, because somewhere down the road, they may well pee off someone with a law degree and a Bar certification, and as a result could easily wind up defending themselves for breach of contract.

It'll be interesting to see how this progresses.