Read the Dog Blog

• Home
• Dog Blog 2023
• Dog Blog 2022
• Dog Blog 2021
• Dog Blog 2020
• Dog Blog 2019
• Dog Blog 2018
• Dog Blog 2017
• Dog Blog 2016
• Dog Blog 2015
• Dog Blog 2014
• Dog Blog 2013
• Dog Blog 2012
• Dog Blog 2011
• Dog Blog 2010
• Dog Blog Singapore
• Family Photos Archive

More New Techie Stuff

I'm an engineer by profession. I spent my career working on computers and networks. I have always been a science fiction fan. You would think that I would be a technology enthusiast - the ultimate early adopter. Turns out that I'm not. I wore an analog watch until digital watches were much cheaper. Now it's quaint but I still wear a watch. I resisted getting a cell phone for years. Instead of going for the latest self-driving features when I bought my last car in 2018, I went to a lot of effort to buy a car with a manual transmission. And I refuse to talk to Alexa or Siri or Cortana. Well, I'd talk to the real Cortana, but not the puny Microsoft imitation.

Besides that, I'm really not a phone person. I much prefer working on my computer. So it isn't surprising that I don't upgrade my phone very often. In fact, through the end of 2021, I have owned exactly two smart phones, an Apple 3G and a Galaxy S7. I get a new smart phone every seven or eight years, whether I need one or not.

Last fall when the story broke that AT&T had been instrumental in starting and funding One America News, Sandy and I decided that we wanted a different phone provider. We decided to wait till after our trip to Bonaire to make the switch. As soon as we were back we went down to the TMobile store. They seemed to have the best deal with their "senior rate plan". Getting older does have some advantages, although not many. I even have a tshirt that says "Senior Citizen - Give me my damn discount"

Since we were changing providers it seemed like a good time for me to get a new phone. I had a Samsung Galaxy S7 which I got in the spring of 2017. Hey, it was only five years old - practically brand new! I liked it a lot. I've used it as my main camera ever since my last trip to Nepal when it took better pictures than the Panasonic Lumix that I bought specifically for the trek. In fact, I liked it so much, that when I smashed the camera lens while I was trying to climb Stack Rock that summer, I got help from my friend Ivan to replace the lens rather than get a new phone. That wasn't easy.

Sandy got an iPhone 13. She has always gone with Apple phones and tablets and wanted to stick with iOS. My first smart phone was an iPhone but last time I upgraded I switched to Android and really liked it better. I use the OS back button and the task manager button constantly on my phone. I got a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra even though it had to be ordered and I had to wait a couple of days for it to come in. Maybe some people couldn't stand to be without a phone but it wasn't a big deal for me. Like I said, I'm not much of a phone person.

I really like my new Galaxy S21. It's definitely faster than my old phone, and with 5G, it's especially faster for internet access when I'm not on wifi. The screen is bigger. That means my phone is bigger, but I don't carry it everywhere so it doesn't bother me. Best of all, it has an amazing camera.

The biggest drawback of the camera in my old phone was the lack of optical zoom. The S21 has five different lenses for 1x, 3x and 10x zoom as well as wide angle and ultrawide angle. It takes 10 megapixel pictures except for ultrawide, which is a whopping 100 megapixels. It does variable digital zoom between the natural zooms of the various lenses. Previously I had stayed away from digital zoom but the sensor has so many pixels that I can use it without a noticeable loss of quality. There is a simple slider control that lets me adjust the zoom while I look at the image in the display. Most of the pictures I take are landscapes while I am hiking. It's really easy to frame my pictures with the camera in this phone. The pictures look great too. The images have good color saturation. I suspect some of that is added by processing in the camera rather than coming naturally from the sensor. Blue skies in pictures are really blue, for example. But however it's done, it takes really nice photos.

My one worry was that the lenses stuck out too far from the back of the phone. It seemed like they would be susceptible to anything from dust to scratches to outright breakage. I had it happen once to my old Galaxy S7. But I found a hard case that was raised slightly in back and has a door that slides shut to cover the lenses when I'm not taking pictures. It works great and I can handle my phone or throw it in my pocket without worrying about anything happening to the lenses.

Of course, less than a month after I got my new phone, the Galaxy S22 came out. But I didn't care. I am very happy with the phone that I got. If I waited all the way from the S7 until the S21 to upgrade, the S22 wasn't going to make me want to switch.

I'm also not an iOS fan when it comes to tablets. I used to have an iPad when I worked at the University of Idaho. The main thing that I do with my tablet though is read books, so for my own personal tablet I have always had a Kindle. My Kindle Fire HD served me well for many years. I admit that for games, the iPad is actually better but I do my gaming on the PC. Tablet games are mostly little toy games, not serious games. So I go with a Kindle to optimize for reading.

Unfortunately, just after the new year, my Kindle Fire died. One day I went to turn it on and nothing happened. I decided to order a new one. While I was at it, I also got a new Kindle Paperwhite. Sandy and I have separate Amazon accounts. I have an inexpensive Kindle that is linked to her account so I can read books in her library. The old Kindle I used for her account had a cracked screen so its days were numbered. Because of supply chain problems I was worried that it would take a long time to get my new devices but they both came quickly, arriving on the same day.

My new Kindle Fire is just ok. The hardware is very nice, but Amazon has expanded the shell that they put over the basic Android operating system. I don't think it is very intuitive. It also means that sometimes games from the PlayStore don't run properly on my Kindle. That isn't a fatal flaw since as I've said I don't game much on my tablet. The UI is definitely annoying though.

I'm pretty happy with the Paperwhite. It's small. It holds a charge forever. It's easy to read the display in bright ambient light (which is great for reading on the beach on tropical vacations). It is a bit slow but it's faster than my old one.

A new smart phone. A new Kindle Fire table. A new Kindle eReader. For someone who isn't always buying the latest version of electronic devices, that was a lot of new stuff in the space of about six weeks. And my new PC, an Alienware Aurora R13, should be arriving soon.