MicroSDHC/SDXC and GPS.
Part IV is here.
MicroSDHC/SDXC:
A MicroSDHC card alongside an adapter for use with SDHC.
A friend gave me this nicely designed MicroSDHC/SDXC card adapter as a gift. It integrates the OTG cable – see Part IV – with a MicroSDHC card slot. No cables. Nice. You can read more about this Kickstarter project by clicking the image below:
Click for the web site.
That adapter takes SDHC cards up to 32GB and SDXC of 64GB. 64GB! SanDisk makes 64GB MicroSDXC Class 10 (10 MB/s) cards for $50. Imagine that – 64 1GB full length movies in a card smaller than a fingernail. Amazing. The Cold War spies of the ’60s with their Minoxes and microdots would have killed for this. It’s so small that concealment is not the issue – finding it is. I’ll report back when I have had a chance to use it. I will use the SDHC adapter in my Panasonic G3 to see whether write speeds are materially worse than with a regular SDHC card.
The prospect of a versatile, top quality camera like the Panny G3, on the road with the Nexus 7 with unlimited storage and decent processing capabilities is intriguing. Further, the WordPress app does the trick for blogging from the road.
Boy, is Apple ever in trouble, or what? They are competing with the Gillette model – sell the holders at cost, sell the blades for profit. (Tablets and clicks, in GOOG’s case). Hard to see how AAPL can ever compete as they have no razor blades to sell and Google’s tablet matches or exceeds Apple’s on quality and performance. If GOOG really wants to kill the iPad, it should simply sell the tablets for a couple of quarters at 50% of cost – 20 million at $100 cost each means a loss of $2bn, compared with annual EBITDA of $17bn. Hardly a stretch if you brief Wall Street in advance on the goal – remove a key competitor, clean up, stock rises. Might as well short AAPL while you are at it. Then they can do the same to Samsung …. or simply cease licensing Android to Samsung.
The Android user may, in fact, be best served using Google hardware as he is assured of the latest OS first (and fast fixes of issues – see below) and has to suffer none of the UI adulteration indulged in by the likes of Samsung.
Then rinse and repeat with cell phones.
GPS fix:
The 2013 Nexus 7 has built in GPS but as shipped there is a software glitch which many owners have reported shuts down GPS after a few minutes of use. This is in contrast to reported experiences with the 2012 Nexus 7 where a like GPS chip works properly.
On August 23, 2013, Google released a software update (Settings->Apps->About tablet->System updates) which updates the Nexus 7 to Android 4.3 Build number JSS15Q, though no mention of a GPS fix appears in the related screens. I have installed this and can report that GPS works well. The update apparently also fixes touchscreen glitches, but I have not had any touchscreen issues.
Disclosure: Long GOOG, purveyors of evil.