Semi-technical thoughts

If you own a Bluetooth A2DP headset and any kind of personal computer, good chance is you tried connecting them together. Isn't it nice to watch movies and listen to music free from cluttering wires? Well, good chance is you hated that experience and if that was the reason for buying the headset, you might've even considered throwing it away (or using it only with your phone). Why do they suck so much? Everything points to the fact that it's not a hardware problem. The same headset most likely will work flawlessly paired with an android device or even the same computer under a different operating system (windows users report huge difference between, like, 8.0 and 8.1, and not in favor of the latter, surprisingly, I think only mac users report good stuff about their macbooks and beats although I didn't try it myself so they might all be faking it :) ). And most likely it's not even the drivers or other low-level stuff, android and desktop linux has mostly the same ...

Adapter I had for charging my laptop broke yesterday. Now I need to give you a bit of a background to explain what kind of adapter that was. So, Lenovo produces lots of different laptops. And, just like all other manufacturers, they have lots of different charger connectors. With Yoga series, it was always some weird variation of USB, not a (more typical until recently) round connector. In particular, for Yoga 3 and 4 it looks like this: (Photo from Aliexpress) It's unclear why apart from making people buy their stupid chargers. You hardly can use the port for anything else when not charging (it's not even 3.0). And I mean stupid, just look at this: (Photo from Aliexpress) How can even call it a "travel" adapter is beyond understanding. If you actually travel, you have either to buy a new one for every socket type, or use a socket adapter which (considering most wall sockets are located in walls) will make this massive charger fall out every few minute...

As I was saying, for half a year I was a proud S7 user and everything was well except somewhat smallish display. My wife started playing Pokemon GO seriously and S6's short battery life was quite frustrating for her. Meanwhile, Note7 was announced and I had to think hard whether I want one. Good part was that hardware is just as good as in S7 (slightly better but who cares about one more gig of RAM and stuff like that) but with bigger screen and even bigger battery. Lack of a non-curved option sounded like a deal breaker to me though, I'd never buy an S7 Edge. Yet, after carefully watching all the video reviews I decided to try it. Curves are more sloped, with larger flat surface (mainly to make S Pen usable, I guess) and symmetrical design looked cool. Fortunately, my situation is not as it used to be a couple years ago and I don't have to limit myself with only one toy per year (although this year I did indulge myself quite a bit) and S7 didn't go to waste — I gave ...

I'm very new to Samsung devices, not so long ago I was sure that expensive phones are not worth it. You have to replace them every year or two anyway, they don't provide new features to justify the price tag, cheaper devices come in better variety and you don't feel bad throwing them away if you don't like them, etc. So for a few years I used whatever cheap Chinese brick was on the market. And before that, well before that I didn't actually own a smartphone. And it was quite all right, comparing notes with friends I thought that annoying bugs and lags from time to time are universal, even if you have four CPU cores and 2 gigs of RAM, that it's mostly a software thing and Java is a bad language for mobile platform, and all that. And then, quite recently, I changed my mind about those things. Partly because my income situation changed slightly. It all started when I needed a birthday present for my lovely wife last year and S6 was out for just a couple months. I...

As some of you know, I'm a happy owner of Huawei Mediapad X1. So far it's the best 7" phablet (not counting the new Mediapad X2, obviously, which has better hardware with the same size and slightly changed buttons) but this post is not about device itself, instead I wanted to write a few words about cables, cases, screen protectors available on the market. By "market" I usually mean Aliexpress but some stuff might be available in your local stores as well. I'm not endorsing any sellers or brands, especially not original accessories, and prices are for reference only (and usually are for one piece and include shipping i.e. if you're thinking to buy a dozen of something, you might be able to find a better deal). In almost all the cases there might be cheaper options but with worse quality, seasonal deals and everything tend to change every month as new manufacturers and sellers come to market. Unlike competitors' devices in the same form factor (I...