It’s Christmas, no better time for shopping.
Charging my iPod is starting to not work properly, which I think means the battery is starting to die. It still charges, but takes a long time, about a day, to fully charge. I’ve already replaced the battery about 18 months ago and it was a generic no-name battery.
It seems like a short life for the replacement battery, but I suspect that’s partly due to me running Rockbox software which isn’t as good at managing battery charging and power use as well as the original Apple software and also the battery quality not being as good as the original (maybe sat on the store rack for a few months discharged and damaging itself).
I like using Rockbox software much more than iTunes and Apple’s own iPod software. The main thing is to be able to create playlists easily as I’m listening rather than setting it to shuffle all like iPods inevitably end up doing otherwise. Since most of my music is in artist folders with albums as subfolders, Rockbox can choose a bunch of folders to queue up in the now playing list and it’ll work its way through them like a jukebox or karaoke machine. Being able to play other formats like Ogg Vorbis and FLAC is nice to have, because music I’ve ripped from CD myself tends to be in one of those formats. They both noticeably drain the battery quicker than MP3; Ogg by a little bit and FLAC really quickly because it has to read from the (mechanical) hard disk much more often.
It’ll be ok for a while, but it’s going to need some sort of replacement. Either I replace the battery again or buy another iPod that can run Rockbox like one of the fifth generation 30Gb or 80Gb models (these are called “iPod with video” by Apple). The currently retailing classic model with an 80Gb or 160Gb drive is no good because all the internal hardware changed and nobody from Rockbox or iPodLinux has figured out how to reprogram it yet. Apparently there’s a different type of processor and the boot process has some new encryption keys involved. The nanos are much smaller and the current models have nearly as much space as the old hard disk ones, but the same hardware changes were made and nobody knows how to reprogram them either.
The batteries are about $30, either from a shop here or mail order off the internet. A second hand fifth generation iPod is somewhere between $90-120 or there’s some refurbished ones from overseas for around $150-180 depending on their disk size. It’s probably not worth it to upgrade to a newer model – there’s nothing wrong with the one I’ve got and there’s a bit of risk that the second hand one isn’t in as good condition. There are a lot of fine scratches on mine that’d polish out, but all the ports work well and there’s no sign that anything else is going to break on it. When I looked in a pawn shop, the few they had were all in bad condition, scratched all over and ports bent from the dock connector being twisted sideways.
My mobile phone also came out of contract at the moment, so I can get a new phone or change to a different phone company without having to pay anything out. It’s time for a new phone, the old one is about three and a half years old I’m on Telstra and despite the calls being cheaper on other networks, I’d strongly prefer not to change networks. My current phone is a 2100MHz 3G phone (not 850MHz NextG) and even though it’s not on Telstra’s best frequency band, I can’t remember the last call dropout because it’s been so long ago. All the others (Optus, Vodafone and 3) get complaints about not properly covering an area or the data speed being slow on Whirlpool.
I could either get another separate phone and music player or one thing that does both of them. If I went back into a ‘free’ phone contract, I’d have to go with the separate phone and music player. There’s nothing on the list of phones in that price range that can work well as a music player (3.5mm headphone socket, good sound quality and music playing software). The Nokia E51 is the best of what’s there, it’s got plenty of features like wireless and Symbian OS, smallish size candybar style, but crappy camera and getting old now that there’s an E52 released which will replace it. Similarly, if I was to buy a prepaid phone pack and drop my own SIM into it, there’s nothing that’s good for playing music. Out of the prepaid phones, the Sony Ericsson T707 flip and J105 Naite candybar look like the best. They’re decent phones with Bluetooth, USB and email, but no smartphone OS that can have programs installed onto it.
The other alternative is to buy a phone outright. Getting an iPhone is sort of tempting. The hardware’s solid, the touch interface is good and there’ll inevitably be people offloading them after Christmas. I don’t spend enough on phone calls to make the Telstra plans worth it, but the 3G (non-S) models are cheap enough on eBay or OCAU now. But that’d mean having an iPhone, using iTunes and joining the Apple cult. What Olek, Nick and Anna said about them late last year is pretty much true. I seem to notice people choosing to poke at their iPhone rather than have a conversation with the people sitting near them much more than any other type of phone, music player or PDA.
There’s plenty more choices buying a phone outright, including phones that were never retailed in Australia. I don’t know enough about them yet, going to have to read up on that more. From the bits I’ve seen, Nokia’s E52 and E55 (E52 with a half-QWERTY keypad) look good, but hardly any take up in Australia yet and a bit expensive. Rumours are circulating that Google will release their own Android phone early next year with some leaked photos floating around the web. It doesn’t sound like anything very different to the existing Android models out there, just that they’ll be marketing it themselves rather than by a separate hardware manufacturer. I suspect it’ll be priced too high to consider, so not going to much difference.
In the end, there’s a lot out there and I don’t know what to do. I probably won’t do anything until mid-January, there’s no rush.
Suggestions are welcome if you know something good!
