Month: May 2005

Reagan on Success

From my Reagan calendar:

"My philosophy on life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose--- somehow we win out..."

Minireview of the PM-325

So I've been playing with my PM-325 for about 3 days now and I've noticed a few things here and there both pro and con.

Pros:

  • Really nice 128x160 screen. It's also much brighter than my N400.
  • Compact. The slide out keypad makes it easier to handle. It's still not as easy to hold has my N400 was, but it's not bad.
  • Decent VGA Camera. Nothing spectacular, but I'm excited to have it.
  • Clear ringer speaker. Not distorted at high volume like some other phones.
  • Bluetooth. Currently supports the Headset, Speakerphone, and Dial-up Networking profiles.
  • Voice memo. It's kinda nice to have. Has a 3 minute total storage.
  • Compatible chargers. I can keep using my Samsung N400 chargers.

    Cons:

  • No speakerphone. There's only a "Monitor" (one-way speaker) function, and it's not really loud enough.
  • Custom ringers are ignored in Roam. When I set a custom ringer for someone, I'd rather that I be allowed to decide if I want a roam ringer to override the custom ringer. I've got a pretty good roaming plan. I don't really care to be notified if I'm answering a call in roaming.
  • No Bluetooth OBEX profile. It'd be nice if I could sync and share my contacts wirelessly.
  • Paging through SMS messages is slow. You click the next button to move to the next message and there is a .5 to 1 second delay.
  • When the cover is slid shut, the screen shuts off after only 3-4 seconds. There's no option to have it stay on for X amount of seconds. So if I get an SMS, I have to check the sceen quick before it goes back out again.
  • Speaking of notifications, after the screen has shut off, there's no visible indication that there's an event to respond to. What if I walk out of the room and don't hear the voicemail or SMS notification? I'd have to open my phone just to check if I missed something. It really should have the red LED flash until I acknowledge the event.
  • The service notification sound is so quiet it's nearly silent. The same goes for the call connect/disconnect sound.
  • Insufficient ringer looping on alerts. If I get an SMS alert, the ringer only plays once. On my N400, the ringer would loop for about 15 seconds. I have to choose longer polyphonic ringers to ensure I hear the alerts when I'm sleeping.
  • Ringer looping isn't seamless. On my N400 there was about a 1/4 gap in the ringer loop. I accepted it because I figured that the N400 was a poor quality phone (and I've come to accept that Samsung products in general are low quality), and therefore I simply figured a new phone would fix the problem. But I was way off. The PM-325 has HUGE gaps in the loop, and the gap lenghths vary, so you can't really work around them. It's really disappointing.

    I'm sure I'll have more comments to come.

    • SprintPCS Native Moblogging

    I just got a new toy! The LG PM-325 Bluetooth Cameraphone for SprintPCS. It even works for DUN. Sometime here I'll have to pick up a bluetooth card for my Zaurus.

    I think I have an idea on how to get a user-firendly interface for Moblogging on SprintPCS phones. If you type either ##3282 or ##3282# on your SprintPCS cameraphone, you'll notice there is an option for a Camera URL. It appears that this is where the phone looks to do it's uploading to Sprint, then Sprint handles the rest. The Default URL on my phone is http://pictures.sprintpcs.com/WMTP_3_4. Potentially all that one would have to do to get an workable replacement interface for this would be to change your camera URL to your own webserver and watch the incoming requests and posts. Unfortunately the service code from my N400 no longer works on my PM-325. If anyone knows a PM-325 service code, please let me know.

    Update: Nevermind. Turns out the MSL (Service Code) is tied to the ESN. I'm going to have to obtain it through other means. I got my MSL for my N400 when I had problems with my Vision service. The guy on the phone had me enter it to reset my NAI programming. Fortunately I wrote it down so I could reset it whenever I needed to. Once I obtain the MSL for this phone, I'll see about finding the MSL in the firmware with BitPIM and a data cable.

    The Cure

    I've got the cure for AIDs. It's so powerful it even cures Herpes. In fact, it'll cure most every STD. It's more effective than any other drug or device made. The cure is free, and is immediately available worldwide. What's the name of this super-cure?

    Abstinence.

    Now, given it's not 100 percent effective. There are rare cases of disease transmission due to things such as accidental blood transfusion. And in cases of illicit drug use, transmission is possible via dirty needles (of course a different sort of abstinence cures this as well). But over time, these diseases could be effectively eradicated amongst populations that practice abstinence and chastity.

    We've got all sorts of foundations, drug companies, and government programs that claim to be looking for a cure when the best cure has been around for millenia. It's up to you to use it.