Hi, my name is Paul, I’m a computer technician and I’m stuck using Comcast/XFinity. I’ve worked at seven sites with XFinity branded Technicolor routers, and I have one in my house. It should be noted I’ve had to disable WiFi on nearly every one of them due it it not working particularly well. Based on my experiences when I saw the claim that XFinity delivered 2X the WiFi performance of Google Fiber I thought “Hrmm, that sounds like a load of horse shit.”

So here’s the advertisement, it’s coming across Facebook as we speak:

You can click the image, it’ll take you to a comparison page where they claim that XFinity will deliver 725Mbps WiFi vs Google Fiber’s 306Mbit per second. Huh, wow, a service that generally tops out at 50Mb can deliver 725Mbps vs a service that tops out at 1000Mb and can deliver 306Mb.

I’m using the average speed as 50mbit as that’s what average is here, but according to a quick search the average Xfinity package is 25Mb.

If you’re not catching the problem right off, that’s what Xfinity is hoping. In these situations you’re always limited to the slowest portion of the connection is the best you’re going to receive. In XFinity’s claim, the maximum internet speed you’re going to get is about 50 Mbit. This means Xfinity will serve you internet via WiFi at 50 Mbit at max.

If they had better internet speeds, they could serve you 725Mbps, but 25-50Mbps is what you’re going to get.

Now, Google Fiber, equal or less expensive (at over a year, those are introductory prices on the Xfinity page,) tops out at 1000Mbit, costs $70 a month, and can deliver 306Mbit of that 1000Mbit.

The actual comparison is 50Mbit vs 306Mbit, in which case using Xfinity’s own advertising they’re saying Google Fiber spanks them by 6X on in-home WiFi. Google Fiber is 12X better if you’re paying for a 25Mbit XFinity package.

Now, should you need to copy multiple terabytes of data via WiFi between two devices in the same network (you don’t need to, really,) you might want to dispute my findings, but for any realistic use of the service they’re making claims that don’t play out in reality.

XFinity is advertising having an 8-lane WiFi highway you can drive a Pinto at 25mph whereas Google has a three lane highway you can drive at 306mph. Sure in the XFinity scenario you can park next to another car and run back and forth to the next cars at 725Mph, but that’s not getting you anywhere.

Xfinity claiming 2X faster WiFi than Google Fiber by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

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I woke up today to some errors involving SSL at work, about eighty emails from places wanting to inform me of their Cyber Monday deals, and a wicked hangover from a carbocoma I’d been fueling for a couple of days with Thanksgiving leftovers.

This is just a collection of random thoughts written down while doing some server maintenance.

Upon getting to work I had multiple texts involving various 4K TVs and flash sales on them (I’ve got a TV from 2004 that hurts me to look at,) and I kept noticing that every single one was more or less not a good deal. Here’s a good one claiming to be a $1600 savings, but when I checked the MSRP and the incredible $1600 savings ends up being about a 14% sale. Oh well. Supply and demand. I see no great Cyber Monday deals. Oh yeah, if someone wants to buy me a TV feel free.

Playing with Maggie’s Amazon Fire Kids Edition (on sale for $84.99 now, extremely decent deal,) I decided I wasn’t going to let her grow up in an Amazon isolated ecosphere and I put Google Play on it (conflict of interest link included as I’m not cut and pasting it over here).

That tablet (which is the same hardware as the $49 version,) is actually a pretty decent machine. I think they’re selling it at a loss to keep you in the Amazon ecosystem and make it up on the back end.

While investigating some SSL and disconnect issues I fired up Microsoft Edge. I never use it. As in I’ve opened it once to see if a problem I was having with Chrome was in fact Chrome or my connection. Anyway, I opened Edge and went to YouTube and was greeted with a thumbnail of a woman giving birth as the first recommended video with all bits visible, the rest was Hindi softcore porn and top-x lists from the early 2000s.

Clicking on the first (which I edited in the pic here,) brought up a warning that it might not be safe for all audiences. Hrmm. You’d think they’d have changed the thumbnail slightly. It was odd.

There were a few hours this weekend when I lost contact with my VZW friends. Evidently they had a mass outage. Combined with that the new Hangouts has decided to deliver SMSes whenever it feels like it so I’m moving off of it as I noticed one at 10:40 that was sent at 4pm asking me if I wanted to do something that night. *sigh*

I got to spend a lot of Black Friday at work diagnosing what the hell was wrong with a Netis 1200 router. I’m to the point I think it’s DOA (wouldn’t do 2.ghz out of the box, loses settings, has to update the firmware just to get Bridge mode to somewhat work, poisoned the connected routers and shut down my network by advertising it was the gateway to everything, rassafrassa) – have another one and will know soon enough if it’s a hardware failure or just a crappy product.

Got a Chromecast 2 I’ll be playing with later today. My old Chromecast gets to go to work and become the conference room Chromecast as I’m getting tired of people asking for a 100 foot HDMI cable.

Finished Tomb Raider, the reboot that was offered for free on XBOX Gold. Overall feel it was a disservice to the Laura Croft character and physics in general, but it was amusing. Seemed like it was nearly impossible to lose on normal difficulty. Tried to start another free game “So Many Me” but it required an update of nearly a gig and the console was already downloading about a gig of updates for Batman.

As a bit of an update on the site, the SEO fixes have leveled the site out. Unfortunately with only me writing for Pocketables now we have about 1/5th of the content we used to. I’m not sure how people above are going to look at this, but I accomplished what I was attempting. Unfortunately now properly ranking for how to root an HTC EVO 4G and all the stuff we wrote about last year doesn’t help too much. FML.

 

Thanksgiving projects through Cyber Monday shenanigans by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

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In retrospect, this is a review that should have been posted pre-Halloween as the mad-scientist looking 1byone Plasma Ball doesn’t particularly fit anywhere else except at a costume party.

The 1byone Plasma Ball is a Bluetooth speaker, a Micro-SD card player, and a plasma lightning ball that responds to touch. In each aspect there’s a level of neat, but combined there’s something to nitpick at every level.

The plasma ball by itself is very neat, but in conjunction with music it doesn’t have any wow effect. The lightning shuts off when the music is at a reasonable volume and only pops on at the top 10% or so of the range. This means unless you’re listening to a solid wall of sound (or have it cranked to 11,) the ball stays off most of the time. Fortunately there’s a switch to lock it on and keep it on.

The speaker is loud, but not particularly clear. Perfect for playing The Monster Mash or such, but at low volumes it’s not particularly amazing.

One of the things you think when you think “Bluetooth” is wireless. Well, you can forget about that. This needs to be plugged into a USB power supply at all times. It doesn’t appear to support USB audio so you’ll still need to pair it if you want to use it from your computer.

Speaking of pairing, I paired with no issues last week, walked in expecting it to work with no issues today, nope.  A weekend of being plugged into a consistent power supply that’s powered by a computer power supply behind two UPSes and a line conditioner (I’m saying there were no power fluctuations,) and the device was brain dead. I had to physically remove power from the device and plug it back in in order to re-pair it.

It may sound like I hate it, but I don’t. It’s just a little bit of a disappointment as a speaker (except it is very loud, I do give it that.) As a Plasma Ball it’s pretty cool though.

The 1byone Plasma Ball Music Speaker is currently out of stock at Amazon

1byone Plasma Ball Music Speaker review by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

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JCase, one of the authors of the Sunshine S-OFF tool, weaksauce, and probably others, has posted two pages dealing with some of how some root exploits actually worked.

It’s vague enough script kiddies aren’t going to grab it and turn every public USB charging station into a virus-ridden Android rooting/malware installing node of great evil, but detailed enough to let you know a little of how things were done.

It’s also probably far enough into the future that the phones it worked on have been patched ten times over, but you never know. It’s an interesting read.

As a note, he could also be posting that he uses purple hippos and screams TANSTAAFL to make the roots happen, but it seems a little more than that.

Details can be found in this post, and this post.

Thanksgiving Eve: Some root disclosures by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

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We’ve got a contest running currently to win a pair of 1byone Bluetooth Sport Earphones, so make sure and enter if you’re interested.

The 1byone Bluetooth Sport Earphones are a Bluetooth 4.1, APT-X, HD, sport headset and microphone that touts a seven hour battery life and claim to be the most reliable BT connectivity available.

1byone Bluetooth Sport Earphone specs

• Battery: ~7 hours, level indicator for iOS
• Bluetooth: 4.1, apt-X, 6th gen CVC tech, pairs to two phones
• Shipping weight: 7.2 oz
• Fit: three sizes of earbuds and ear hooks
• Wear: back of head, clip to tighten
• Charge: Micro USB (cable included)

Package contents

• Earphones
• 6x ear gels
• 6x Ear hooks
• Plush bag for storage
• Instruction manual
• USB to MicroUSB cable

Starting up

The unit can pair to two phones. Pairing is initiated by simply holding down the power (center button) for about five seconds. To pair a second phone you do the same. Pair again and you lose the pairing with the first phone. It’s pretty simple but lacks the ease of NFC pairing.

The earbuds and hooks were the right size for my ears so I was set to start with. The only thing that had to be adjusted was the ear hook angle and the clip was set for a significantly smaller head than my ginormous noggin.

Initial impressions of the 1byone Bluetooth Sport Earphones

Near perfect fit, I’ll note though that what fits my ears may not work for yours. Reading other reviews these fatigue some people’s ears. Not had that happen however we’re dealing with a two-day test.

The volume is just about right for me when I’m trying to blast it. This is something I generally have a problem with in Bluetooth headsets. This is aided by the correct fit causing some outside noise cancellation and a good seal, so it may just be that.

Earphones are a bit large (stick out far.) I’m not sure this is going to make much of a difference as they’re pretty light and don’t seem to bounce when you’ve got them in right. I tried headbanging to some John Denver, yes, really stop laughing, I needed a test. The weight of the earphones didn’t seem to make a difference. I do notice when doing said headbanging that I hear the cable on the back of my neck moving slightly. I also notice that I’m not 24 any more.

Playing audio from my phone located anywhere on my body sounded good. No back pocket vs front pocket Bluetooth dropouts. Audio sounds as good as I expect a a compressed audio file to sound. Need to test further with FLACs and see how those roll.

Flipping open the charging port is very easy. A little too easy actually and has me looking for what the IP rating on these are. I’ll post if I can find it.

Above: charging

Raised rubber controls are easy to feel, although rather than making one of the controls have a bump or something they dug the control indicator in where you can’t feel it. This makes it kind of a guessing game whether your finger’s on the power or one of the volume/track buttons. You will, however, memorize what is right after one use (vol up nearest ear, power middle, vol down furthest away).

On to the bad

I generally don’t bother posting microphone reviews because I’m on Sprint and, really, audio is bad enough to begin with on Sprint so nothing gets a fair shot, but I got a call from a friend of mine who asked if I was in trouble.

I asked why and she mentioned it sounded like I was whispering through a gag. I turned off the headset audio, continued on the phone and everything was fine. She mentioned it was really bad so I decided to test it on my work’s phone system.

I called and left a message starting with the phone audio normal, then the headphones with the mic in front (worn backwards,) then the 1byone Bluetooth Sport Earphones worn correctly (mic behind ear).

The results were a meh but ok phone call on the M9/Sprint, very muffled when worn with wires running in front of my face, and my work’s voicemail actually cut me off when recording in correct position because it couldn’t hear anything.

Not a fan of the microphone. May just be mine as I see no reviews about this elsewhere. We’ll get onto my beef with some other reviews in a minute, don’t worry.

Bluetooth range was also noticeably not amazing. I got about 14 feet away from the phone before it started breaking up. Now, a sport headset generally isn’t designed to be that far away from the phone, but as they claim it’s the best Bluetooth connection, no. Just something to think about.

For those of you who wear the band over your ear, which reduces jogging bounce and keeps the cord off of your neck, I couldn’t get the side with the controls to play nice. I tried it a bit, but it didn’t want to fit my ear for over-ear hang.

Comparison to some other reviews

Doing some research trying to find some specs on this have lead me to one other review that had problems with music cutting out at the beginning of each song.

I personally didn’t, however I did notice when walking away from the base that I could hear it switching codecs or something as the further I walked there would be a little pause, music would resume and sound slightly different.

It appeared to cut out for a second when making a phone call, however I could not duplicate the cutout and I don’t know whether this was from the headset or the phone.

Other reviews in general

I don’t think they’re buying reviews on Amazon, but page one of the reviews contains ten reviews of which nine were either given for a review or highly discounted for a review. Page two was seven out of ten. Page three of reviews was entirely discounts and free product. Page four is ten free/discounted reviews, etc.

I counted five people who didn’t claim to have gotten them for a discount or free. I’ll note however, those five people seemed to like the things still.

As such, considering I don’t give much credence to anyone who reviews something on Amazon 5 stars and got it free, I’d say look out for review stuffing.

As a sidenote, yes, I got these free, and they are running a contest through us. Yes you can trust me because I say you can so there.

Companies give these away to review so that people know the product is out there. Unfortunately this leads many Amazon reviewers to giving a five star review for fear of not getting more free stuff.

Things I was asked to check

Buttons are easy to find, you’ll get what’s what after one use. Raised rubber over smooth plastic. Music and Volume control are shared on a three-button multifunction pad. Vol up if you just press the button, next track if you hold for two seconds.

There is no accompanying software, so text to voice only will work if your messaging client currently supports it or you get a third party software to read texts to you.

Battery life I did a five hour stint and had no issues, supposedly is a seven hour life but it’ll be overnight before I get a chance to test the actual time as I’ve been having to move around too much today and make too many phone calls.

Fit feels fine. Ears grew a bit weary around the four hour mark, I’ll note that I don’t generally have earphones in that long before they start bugging me.

Overall

No problems in the role of a sport music player. No problems as a music playing earphone at all. Problems with the microphone which may be specific to my experience, I couldn’t use this to talk through though.

Relatively short distance from base before audio cuts out (most of my headsets seem to get about 5-8 more feet). Probably not an issue for workouts, but for working around the shop might be a pain.

Sound reproduction seems great, although my source material is usually 320k CD rips I made several years ago, and I can hear the dull rubber effect of the MP3 encoding.

I’ve had bad, average, better than average, and amazing headsets in my days with Pocketables, these are better than average, but they’re not amazing. As we do the five star scale here where 5 is amazing, 4 is good, 3 is better than average, 2 is meh, 1 is hell no, these sit at around a 3/3.5 in my book.

The 1byone Bluetooth Sport Earphones are available from Amazon for $42.99

1byone Bluetooth Sport Earphones review by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

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The Uncarrier today announced something to make some Sprint customers very happy, that being that starting Thursday Sprint customers that switch to T-Mobile will receive a $200 credit on their bill in addition to up to $650 they’ll pay per line for early termination fees.

There are no trade-ins required, although whether your phone will work on the new carrier, you’ll have to check.

I cannot think of any wireless customers in more desperate need of some holiday cheer than those Sprint customers still hanging on over there. Those poor people have put up with the nation’s slowest and smallest LTE network, and their carrier throwing out a deal-of-the-month for everyone except them. We know Sprint’s customers love T-Mobile when they switch, so this holiday season, we’re taking away every barrier and cost to coming over to the Un-carrier and America’s fastest 4G LTE network. Happy holidays!

-John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile.

T-Mobile will be “delivering gifts” to Verizon and AT&T customer in the coming weeks.

After having a chat in the neighborhood Facebook group about what various people have been told by Sprint customer service for the past four years, I’m probably going to mosey on over as I’m now sitting at 0 bars on a tower that’s supposedly had six upgrades and fixes since I’ve been calling in reporting it messed up. That, however, is my experience, yours of course may vary.

Whatever the case, with the ability to port your phone number and potentially take your phone (I seriously need to delve into that,) there is no reason not to switch other than that Google Voice carrier number integration will probably be lost.

If you’re wondering what carrier is right for you based on coverage, I encourage you to not believe the blatant lies their coverage maps claim. I haven’t seen anything from carriers (other than T-Mobile,) that uses user-reported speeds. Go to Sensorly if you’re wanting something accurate.

[T-Mobile]

T-Mobile bailing out beleaguered Sprint customers by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

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