Mein alter Schul- und Bloggerfreund Cedric Weber hat sich in den letzten Weihnachtsferien seinen Brck in der Brck-Zentrale in Nairobi (Kenia) abgeholt. Und ich darf den jetzt endlich testen. Yay!
Der Brck im Test
Category: mobile phones
Overlay SIM für mobile Bankgeschäfte
Während wir in Deutschland auf die ultimative Lösung bei mobilen Bezahlsystemen warten und immer wieder die Datensicherheit in Frage stellen, macht man sich in anderen Ländern diesbezüglich weniger Sorgen. Sorgen um die Manipulierbarkeit eines ohnehin schon wackeligen Mobilfunksystems, dessen Sicherheit für eine größere Kundenzufriedenheit und niedrigere Gebühren bereitwillig geopfert wird. Bedenken gibt es da höchstens seitens der Politik, die hier gierig die Hand auf hält und eine Einnahmequelle sieht.
fake 12W Apple A1401 charger
I recently bought a 12W charger for my iPad mini which was said to be an “Original Apple” product. Being the nerd I am, I had to take a closer look on this item upon arrival and quickly realized that it is well made, but unfortunately FAKE charger. Well made, as it comes with a nice print and metal connector.
After posting this on Instagram and adding some notes, I realized that I should instead turn this into a blogpost as it may be useful to someone out there:
- The font is a bit too bold.
- Apple nerds will notice the even spacing between “Designed by Apple in California” and “Assembled in China” as well as between “A1401” and “TM and ©” and “2012 Apple Inc.”.
- “For use with information technologie equipment.” (technology)
- “materiel” instead of “matériel”
- The (measured) output is just 5V/0.8A.
- The plastics have a very similar glossiness to the original, but you will still note some bad quality issues here and there. Like the cover on the USB port as pictured below or the uneven gaps between the two plastic covers.
- There is a serial number inside the USB port, but the port itself is of low quality (the plastic tongue inside is poorly shaped).
As someone who used to sell polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) for a French mineral oil company some years ago, the plastics often are the biggest hints why something is of lower quality and probably fake. For a device that can not be opened and thus requires the user’s trust (that the inside PCB / circuit is of higher quality), the external appearance often is the only criterion we can rely on.
And as someone on Instagram also noted: the only method of buying chargers these days is going for 2nd hand gear that is proven to be original. THIS very auction, however, was one of those “let me buy a used item via eBay to make sure it’s original”-approaches, but which also failed.
Twitter hilft!
Letztens wollte ich mein über zwei Jahre altes Nokia 1800 Prepaid Handy von seinem O2-Netlock befreien und rief dazu die Hotline von O2 an, wo mir zuerst ein falscher Code genannt und dann vorenthalten wurde, dass man den Freischaltungscode nur maximal 10x eingeben dürfe. Am Ende der ca. 30 Minuten dauernden Prozedur hatte ich dann ein dauerhaft gesperrtes Nokia Handy, das fortan nur noch im O2-Netz verwendet werden kann.
Mchimba kisima hungia mwenyewe*
Going by how much iOS4 slowed down the iPhone 2G and 3G, I am still undecided whether I should update iOS 5.1.1 on my iPhone4 to iOS6. I did update the iPad2, though. Just out of curiosity (of course, everyone does it for this reason) and to convince myself of the following situation:
Maps are important. You may have a choice of what is to run in a native map app or within the browser, but many apps actually make use of the map system. So chances are that your favourite app will also be forced to use Apple maps.
I also just couldn’t update all apps at once on my iPad2 16GB – because there’s ONLY 2.6GB left. With GarageBand taking up 1.1GB alone, iOS6 refused to update. Now, after manually updating GarageBand, it’s reduced from 1.1 GB to 734 MB. I hope that Apple removed Retina graphics for those devices that don’t come with Retina displays (like my iPad2). In any case, many Apple apps are horrible memory hogs – and it seems that no one really cares about it, which imo is the worst part.
Atm, I don’t really see a benefit in updating iOS 5.1.1 to iOS6 on the iPhone4 (not4S) except for some minor improvements. I may change my mind on this, but would only do it if it really improves performance of the phone. And you?
* Mchimba kisima hungia mwenyewe = He who digs a pit will fall into it himself.
AOB: the first iFixit teardown
The first iFixit teardown of the iPhone5 comes with a least two good messages: a) the iPhone5 is opened front-to-back and b) the home button appears to be easily replacable. That’s extremely good news, imo. Not so nice is the excessive amount of glue underneath the lightning connector cable – which also tells me that it may be prone to damage. Huh, “Scuff Gate“? Apple fanboyz and their luxury problems.