cell phone – Page 2 – TruXter Tech

Cricket’s ZTE Sonata 4G One Month Review

Posted on2014/09/242015/04/24AuthorTech Review Man8 Comments

My one month review of the Sonata 4G from ZTE from Cricket. Aka z740g

Battery – 1785 mAh
Processor – 1.4 GHz Dual-Core Qualcomm® MSM8230
RAM – 1 GB
ROM – 4 GB
Camera – 5 MP (backside only, No front camera)
Resolution – 480×800
OS – Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean)

Preface
So Cricket’s parent company got sold to AT&T and everyone who was on Cricket’s CDMA signal has to switch over to AT&T’s GSM phones. I was on the edge about moving from my Samsung Galaxy Admire II. I knew that we still had 5 months before we would have to make the switch, decided to just go right ahead and not wait until the last minute. I made the change.For more on the Cricket AT&T AIO Merger.
I shopped for the best processor, lowest cost, most storage fastest boot/reboot.

My budget (this is the budget tech review website so deal with it) was to spend between $80-$150. My total cost was $75.78 that covered the phone and my first month on the Cricket/AT&T GSM network.
First app I noticed was a task manager that none of my previous Android phones had, without me having to root the Sonata. Next thing I found is I can move apps to the SD to save storage space on the phone, and yes completely without having to root the phone.

Camera
Disappointing that I didn’t notice there was no front facing camera. but if you need a selfie, you can do a shelfie. Just set the timer (click the gear in camera mode you will see it) and set the camera to 3,5,10 seconds and back up and pose. When done, crop the image.This works well with my case that came with a stand. but again, it takes a whole lot of pictures before you get one decent photo. A BUNCH OF PHOTOS.

There was much more to learn. So I had to dig into the camera and see what it is capable of.
First 10 photos came out very poor.
I even tried a few of my best tricks. Like hold the phone braced firmly against a tree or a wall or rested on a table. Still blurry.
I tried a few changes in the setting but everything by default was set up to the best settings.
The zoom… the zoom was like the first issue of android. A slider bar at the bottom of the screen. No pinch zoom.
The video camera shoots at very high resolution and the slider zoom feature is great. but clunkier and has a bad focus rate as compared to pinch zoom cell phone cameras.
Do not shoot video footage of concerts. The audio is horrendous. The audio/noise filters (maybe???) seem to try too hard to cancel noise and you are left with what sounds like a concert in a wind storm. Here is a comparison of the Sonata ZTE Z740G camera verses iPhone 4s camera.

Actual phone function
Sounds are clear. When people speak you hear everything they say and no one ever asks you to repeat yourself. No chop in audio at all.

Video play back
This phone has the clearest video I have seen as of yet. Loads all sorts of sites and I didn’t have to load any apps to the phone. No plugins needed. Just right out of the box loading every video on Reddit and Facebook I would stumble into. There is a download button on one of the video players . This lets you watch and download a lot of different videos.

Web Browser
Web browser on the ZTE Sonata is frustratingly jumpy. Pages keep loading and jumping all over the place. I suggest you install Opera or Opera mini. Either will be fine and solve this jumping issue. Forget all of the other cell phone web browser. Opera is the king of cell phone web browsers.

Video Games
Have not yet found a game that will make this phone stutter. Every game plays well.

Video display
The screen frustrates me. You have only one angle to view from. Move too high up and you lose visibility. Move too far right and the screen gets white and fonts are hard to read. Move left and screen gets super dark.

Battery life
Ehh nothing special. battery drains just as fast as all of my other phones. You get around 8 hours of battery life if you don’t touch your Sonata. Play any games or browse Reddit or Facebook, you’ll be on the charger in under an hour, completely drained in 2 hours.

Resources
Not understanding this. The ZTE Sonata seems to not handle resources very well. I don’t see anything lagging or stuttering, but looking at the task manager, the Sonata seems to always be using more than half of it’s R.A.M., even if I go through the task manager tabs to disable applications.

Reception

The phone picks up a great signal and nearly never is without a signal. but this is AT&T so we are looking at dropped calls seemingly for no reason what-so-ever.

Function
Along with dropped calls, there is a constant need to reboot. Called Cricket and they told me to just pull the sim card out and replace it. Me being a person who has been on AT&T (who owns Cricket now) a few times, I know better than to do this. You will wear out that sim card pretty quick. The main trick is to get you to do a full shut down and take the battery out for a few seconds (go ahead and leave it out for about a minute) and replace the battery then reboot. This does it for you nearly every single time. No logic in taking the sim card out at all.

Final overall
IMHO this is a decent phone. Looks and feels like a strange knock off of the Samsung Galaxy Admire II.

The back button is in an unusual (sort of stupid) spot, unless you are left handed. In fact a few things about this phone would be beneficial to lefties. Like the power connector. If you are right handed and use the phone for wide screen while on the charger, the cable points straight up. So you are battling the power chord.
App shortcuts keep disappearing. Constantly. but they might just be the apps that have been moved to the sd card. and this could be during updates.

Review score of ZTE Sonata:
Cost: 10/10
Camera: 3/10
Display: 3/10
Video Playback: 10/10
Battery life: 7/10
Resource life: 5/10

Total Score of the ZTE Sonata: 6/10

**update**

Programs are crashing left and right. This thing loses wifi constantly. I get notifications of apps closing like every 20 minutes. I just turn the thing off when I am at work so I am not looking at phone every 3 minutes. There was an update about the same time the Starbucks app updated and everything crashed so I think it is an overall issue with the phone and whatever default programs are on it, one of them updated and is causing complications with other apps. because it isn’t just the Starbucks app crashing.

The camera is a bit better than I expected, there are tons of settings in the menu area, from iso to saturation to contrast setting. This camera is great really.
Dark settings ISO 1600
Bright settings ISO 60
Turn everything in the “image” section down to 1/3 or a tad bit less. Adjust accordingly with location and lighting.

Default image save file type is .png

Mycrk.it Text message

Posted on2014/05/20AuthorTruXter1 Comment

No way I would click a random link, so I took it to my pc and typed in the address from the text message. got a redirect to a legit page on Cricket’s website
which had this video in it.

as we all know, the company that owns cricket is called “leap Wireless” and the company that owns AIO is AT&T. and we all know that AT&T just purchased LEap Wireless, that is why the merger of AIO and Cricket is on going now.
Basically, Cricket people if you go in, you will need to change your plan.
Aio people, will not need to change their plan.

Knowing Aio and Cricket are now owned by AT&T…
Everytime I find a good cell company, AT&T buys them out. Eventually I have to go in and trade my phone for a phone compatible to their signal. and they always offer me “a great deal” where they give me a phone at the “same value” as my previous phone… which means that if I bought my phone in a discount sale at $29, they give me their current $29 phone.. Basically… I have to downgrade drastically because a smart company does not have a decent phone on sale at that time. or a voucher for $29 off of a phone, and all sales will be crap phone.

Count on that big ol brick phone being offered for the value of your current phone.

They have done this to me twice now.

My first phone was AT&T and it wasn’t even good enough to be a nokia brick. It had a metal antenna and couldn’t even play snake. AT&T charged me $120 for that phone. So I later found some off brand company local to my area that was offering new $175 nokia phones if we trade our AT&T phone and pay $25. or something close. so I pounced on it and grabbed one. one month later I am standing in line at AT&T trading my phone in because they merged with the company that stole me away. What did they give me? A phone the size of my shoe.
I couldn’t get a signal anywhere. I called and asked for help and repeatedly got told “hmm that’s odd, no one else is complaining, pay $85 with your insurance and you will get a replacement for that exact model phone”. So I started looking for a new company. I found the one that had that blue alien with the football shaped head and a snorkel on top. Primco… Finally got my first flip phone. It was gold, made by audiovox. Pretty slick looking. Paid $29 for it. with in a year, AT&T bought them up and ……BAM… same stupid Nokia brick..

Here it is after 14 years of swearing I would never go back to AT&T…. They bought out Cricket.

Why Microsoft is pushing windows 8

Posted on2014/03/302014/03/30AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

Though the world would like to use windows 7 and continue running their computers the way they are used to , and continue being familiar with their desktops and computing atmosphere.

Microsoft will not let that be the option. they will pay all of the cnets and zdnets and mashables and verges to do reviews that say how fantastic some stupid function is.. like siri and it’s ability to misspell on apple products (dif company same tactics) . Bad pr is still pr.
They will make you want that one stupid tiny function so bad, you will settle for the assream the rest of the o/s has.. and it will be so idiotic, like mine sweep will have purple background… or something useless.

Why does Microsoft want to go this route? Why does Microsoft want to go the “apps’ route and touch screen and big puffy buttons?

because the apple and Microsoft court case where Microsoft had to prove they were not ripping off apple, and Microsoft was just a software company.. not a computer company. so the courts forced Microsoft to agree to never make computers.

Now Microsoft is in the telephone and tablet business.
When they bought Nokia, they confirmed it.
because they aren’t computers. They can’t make computers.. but they can make tablets.
as long as they don’t call them computers.

but this is just Microsoft rolling back to the windows 3.01 look. Minus Program manager.

If Sprint buys T-mobile what happens?

Posted on2013/12/13AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

What can we expect to happen if Sprint buys T-mobile?

Both companies known for their customer loyalty and fair billing.
They are both known for their loss of signal.
What is also known is that they both are on different networks.
Sprint is CDMA and T-mobile is GSM. Two different networks.

So there is no chance of merging the networks and making a tweak to either one and increasing the size of the cell network.
So it would have to be one or the other. Which means one network is about to take on the load of the other network.

If life had rules maybe. There is a chance they give customers the choice and just maintain both networks. Which sounds like madness if you expect Sprint to fire off every single T-mobile employee. Which lots of companies seem to eventually do. but not if Sprint keep both signals

Blackberry with Porsche Design

Posted on2013/11/192013/11/19AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

Warning, not for the clueless Apple/Android hipsters.
This phone is made for adults. For the executive.
While it appears to do the same thing your apple and android does, the Blackberry Porsche designed phone does it in a more elegant smart phone manor.
Clean, sleek, and professional from the ones who created the entire smartphone market.
The New & Exclusive Porsche Design P’9982 smartphone from BlackBerry
Has put out one fine product.

Blackberry has continued to produce executive phones for many years, and survived the big boom of the media player toy phones such as the Apple iphones and the android droid phones. Blackberry and rim are standing with the phone that keeps the adults looking like adults and not cartoons.
The BlackBerry P’9982 is one beautiful beast of a phone.
The BlackBerry P’9982 clearly is not your daughter’s phone.
A peak at the New & Exclusive Porsche Design P’9982 smartphone from BlackBerry

Unboxing the Porsche Design P’9982 smartphone from BlackBerry

Mobile device and internet price

Posted on2013/09/29AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

I read a post on reddit (which linked to this article) that covers a few of the topics I have covered before. This brought up an issue I am having. This issue is with my cell carrier charging me more for less.
Seriously I don’t see why so many people pretend this isn’t going on. My only guess is everyone really wants to pretend they are so wealthy, they don’t worry about stuff. Or they figure they can’t do anything about the issue so they won’t discuss it and assure someone else they notice the issue, so something can get started to solve it.
The issue. Is bandwidth limits. 4 gigs.
what can you do with 2-4 gigs a month?
Not dang thing.
Except check email.
Facebook has too many pictures. You should hit your cap before the end of the month all year round.
but the trick is, you upgrade your phone to a phone that can only use 4G and now your unlimited internet is capped at 2-4 gigs a month. and my carrier will not allow me to switch back to 3g for this phone. My cell phone provider says my phone won’t work on 3g because my cell phone is specifically made for 4g. So their website wouldn’t even let me register the phone I had until I would call and change my service plan. Since the 3g cell phone I had couldn’t use 4 g it wouldn’t let me change my plan. Imagine how those phone calls went when I was speaking to Stewy in the middle east..So now I am on a 4g plan that costs slightly more than my 3g plan was… Which was unlimited, and of course when I am in an area that doesn’t have 3g, the internet status on the phone shows that I am running at 3g or whatever is available.
Seriously. I do not see much difference between 4g and 3g. at all. Signal isn’t better. bandwidth might be a tad faster on the stats tests, but youtube still loads like hell.
Something posted on reddit on this issue.

They’re like drug dealers “here, have better stronger faster internets on your little squint device, at the same price as your home device… but you can only have so much a month, unless you pay more”.

This mentality is as if there is a limited amount of internet “sorry sir but your internet baggy is now empty, pay more and we will refill it for you, only so much per person”.

as if they are conserving something.

Truth is. If they leave their bandwidth at one current speed and not increase to faster,The more their use goes up, would reflect more customers are signing up. It’s not our fault they increased their speed.

I mean really , how fast do you need to load a 6kb m.xxx.com website?

The whole thing is a f-ing scam.

Someone seemingly fighting this battle all alone for a while now.

2009 saying same thing

2010 saying same thing

2012 saying same thing

and it seems to be coming more and more true.

Later in 2012

We’re all feeding a corporate beast in denial. To hide our sham e of being so gullible we tell ourselves we like it and need it and take it to the next level of upgrading and updating our phones and other mobile devices to the latest and greatest as soon as it comes out. That’s $400 each time. That’s two or three times a year. We want people to think we are on top of things and smart. Truth is, if we were smart we would know that these devices do nothing but waste our valuable time and ruin our eyesight doing it. Yet here we are. You on your iPad, either agreeing or disagreeing with me.

Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 From Cricket

Posted on2013/07/302013/09/03AuthorTruXter2 Comments

Built in the Axiom shell is the latest Android Galaxy. This means that if you need a new case or any accessories, you have a good chance of finding the parts you need by simply looking for Axiom. Or go into setting/about device and scroll to bottom you will see a model number SCH-R830c. Google that or search eBay for that number and you will find Axioms and Galaxy Admire 2 are the exact same phone, and share a lot of identical parts.
Video of first boot of my Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 From Cricket to show it’s boot time (scroll to bottom of page). Then pictures to compare the Admire to a Bionic and a Zio. ( Benchmark scores)
I received my Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 today from Cricket. and right away, put the phone on it’s charger. Battery was at about 50% charge upon arrival. (of course I didn’t think to take pictures until a bit after opening and charging)

Finally, No stupid logo in the front.

The sim card and micro SD already inserted. For the record, this phone does not require a special memory card to Cricket’s Muve Music.

Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 with back cover off

Now understand, I am upgrading from a very out dated Kyocera Sanyo Zio. Which is a decent phone for it’s time. But. Single core 600mhz little to no storage, Android 2.2.1. on the plus side, the phone is almost bullet proof. Been dropped countless times and still works fine, no cracks and less than average scratches. It’s a little tank.
Little is the key word. The screen is a bit small so the Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 will be a nice upgrade with near 1/4 inch larger screen.
Here is a front comparison of the two phones the Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 and the Sanyo ZIO

Which doesn’t look like that much pocket space has been compromised, but look at the slight difference in the screen size.
Here is a side photo of the two phones

Very little (if any) difference in thickness.

I do have to admit that for a couple months, I had a flashed Motorolla Droid Bionic from Verizon , but there was this stupid update notice that I was warned not to do. Well one day, I was typing a text…. and the notice popped up. yep… I clicked it. $50 for the flash right down the drain. but the screen on the bionic was huge. and the Android version was Ice Cream Sandwich. Some options and abilities from Froyo android 2.2, gone, but some things ran smoother with ICS. Also I had to replace the screen on the bionic on the second day after flashing to Cricket. Dropped the thing not even 2 feet. Landed on a corner.
Here’s a front view comparison of the Motorola Bionic and the Galaxy Admire 2.

The screen area of the Bionic is nearly the same size as the entire Admire 2.
Thickness comparison between the bionic and the Samsung Galaxy Admire 2.

The Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 is a considerable amount thinner than the Bionic.

Took me too long to figure this out, but the tiny button on the right side of the Samsung Galaxy Admire 2 is the power button. Not the big skinny button in the front.

Now for the initial boot up

Very fast boot.
Shockingly fast.

: First Screen

: Balloon Tip

: Trying to load location for weather

Big issue I have run into repeatedly is the back button and menu button. They buttons are too close to the edge. My fingers barely ever make proper contact. and then add the edge of the case I recently added. Plus, for some reason that space between the buttons and the glass, is somehow active and sensitive. So whatever is on the screen above that space activates when you hit that space.

Trying Siri Like Assistant for android

Posted on2013/06/072013/06/08AuthorTips Of TechLeave a comment

I have been trying sms readers and text to speech apps for days now. and have not found a single tts program yet that works all that well. So I took a break from the few I installed.
Motorola Droid Bionic
With Android version:Ice Cream Sandwich

Here are the text to speech apps I liked the most

SMS Reader This one worked for a while, then I opened settings, and exited and it never read my messages again. Also wouldn’t do speech to text.

DriveSafe.ly®

This one I didn’t like so much. everything was trial.

Now to the Assistant.
So far, the only one worth messing with is called
Assistant from Speaktoit.

Pros
You can change the way your Avatar looks. you can tell her/him she/he has a new name and change her/his name. You can send messages to your Twitter account and Facebook account.Your assistant will offer you the chance to have your responses to your Facebook status update read to you when someone replies. You can search for anything nearby. You can search for answers to most questions and you can schedule plans using your Google calendar.

Cons
Uses it’s own selection of search engine which could be a Google affiliated program, but not sure. The “search for nearest” isn’t the most correct for any of the searches I did. I even searched for a taco bell right up the street less than a mile away, it showed me one that is ten miles away and said it was three miles away. twitter portion does not use twitter app. Neither does the Facebook status updates. So this thing is constantly running . Which means it sucks your battery down fast.If you tell the assistant to open Facebook app, it tries to post a status to Facebook. Not sure how comfortable I am with giving away so many passwords. With the app open while phone was on charger, my battery dropped to 80%. Normally I can watch youtube videos and post to Facebook and never drop a percent while on charger. When responding to a text message, the other person never gets it.

Tried for a while to locate more voices while going through all of the tts and text to speech searches (yes type it both ways different results). None for free and most apps have their own voices. Surely all of this should come free with the dang phone.

How to make Folders on Android 4.0.4 Ice cream Sandwich

Posted on2013/05/272013/05/31AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

Upgraded my cell phone finally. Now it’s time to customize my phone with all of my folders and regular apps. so… wait.. wtf? Why? Where did it go?
Took me a couple weeks to learn this. but of course I just upgraded from one of the older versions of Android that allows you to long press the main screen to create folders and a few other options. So it was frustrating when I long pressed my main screen and the only option I got was to change my background.
One of my coworkers has gone so far as installing some application that helps him create folders on his phone and get this. It even lets him create labels for the folders.

Well, the answer is simple. yet impractical. So when you see the answer, you’re going to twitch an eye a bit. It’s so simple that when I tried to show my coworker, he wasn’t having it. Did not want to hear any of it.

go to main menu
Locate application shortcut.
long press that shortcut.
drag and drop to main screen.
locate another application, long press that application
drag and drop that shortcut onto the other application shortcut on main screen.

Folder will pop open, now click on the title. It will allow you to create a title for the folder.

This might be an accident, and will most likely get removed from next version of android.
Can’t go letting us have all this control .

Right?

Phone Demos CES 2013

Posted on2013/01/082013/01/08AuthorTruXter

Firefox Phone OS DEmo

Ubuntu Phone OS Demonstration

These two look like great phone operating systems. The Ubunto phone though surely has more developers and would most likely have a greater chance of surviving the market. but if the Firefox phone makes it out to enough people in the market, we could see a huge drop in phone prices and an increase in advertisement (sponsored by) but the question I have is “Does the firefox phone run on a Linux kernel?”. If this is a fact then lots of my fears of Microsoft and Apple consuming Linux, can be put to rest. Unless the Linux group is building up (fattening up) the market for sell off.

but that has very little to do with phones.

Sorry I didn,t have anything to write so I popped out opinions. These phones look like they will be great options/alternatives over the big three. Sorry rim lovers, you don’t make the list.

ubuntu_phone