The Scribbler: One device

First of many - a Psion Organiser, circa 1988

I’ve been conducting an experiment recently. I’ve been trying to determine if a single device can address all, or even most, of my day-to-day computing needs.

A bit of background. Over the years, I have been searching for the elusive perfect device. The one that you can work on, use to play games, and still fits in a pocket. I started this search before the Internet existed, and before mobile phones were portable. As new devices came along, I tossed out the old and bought the new. But in truth, it’s only in the last year or so when that elusive device has finally come within my grasp. And yet, has it?

The Next Generation Psion, somewhere in the early nineties.

My study has focused on two devices: a large mobile phone (6 inch display) and a small tablet (8 inch display). They both run a variant of the Windows operating system. Specifically:

Nokia Lumia 1520 with Windows Phone 8.1
Lenovo Miix 2 8 with 32 bit Windows 8.1

Now, I am using both of these as consumer devices. I ‘consume’ content, such as webpages, Twitter, videos, games and so on. I haven’t really tried to do much serious work on either of them. In fact, I am typing this report sitting in front of my extremely large and powerful Windows 8.1 laptop (Core i7 and lots of memory and an enormous display).
Here are my thoughts.

The Nokia 1520 with Windows Phone 8.1

Nokia Lumia 1520

The Nokia is not my mobile phone, although I have just stuck a Nano SIM in it. I use an old Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray running an old version of Android for that because it’s small and light and fits in a pocket and I can take it anywhere. So, the Nokia is a secondary device.

When I opened the box, I loved it. It’s sleek, and smooth (is that the same as sleek?), and has a wonderful display (1920 by 1080 – although I cannot see the text on webpages without glasses). Windows Phone synced my apps and settings with my other devices as soon as I signed in with my Microsoft account (one benefit of operating devices within the same ecosystem).

And then I started using it as my only consumption device. I put away the tablet and just used this. And it’s pretty good. The web browser works reasonably well, although it’s not quite as slick as IE on the tablet.

I was able to configure email, Skype, Twitter and the rest with relative ease, and for a week, I seriously considered selling the tablet on eBay.

But then a couple of things I didn’t like.

First, Skype on Windows Phone does not support SMS texting. Now, you’ll say ‘but it’s a phone, use the SMS feature of your telecom provider. And I agree, but I have always used Skype for SMS, and I want to carry on. So, this is irritating. It’s not the phone’s fault, nor even the operating system’s. It’s the version of the app that Microsoft provide. I guess I can live without it now I do have a SIM installed.

Second, and this is a big deal, the Bluetooth on the handset doesn’t support a keyboard profile. I hear you saying ‘what on earth would you want to add a keyboard to a mobile phone for?’ And I would remind you we’re searching for the one device you can stick in your day bag and do everything on, so adding a keyboard is an issue, potentially, at least. Without a keyboard, I cannot work. I don’t know my touch type rate, but its pretty fast on a proper keyboard, even the small (but perfectly formed) Microsoft Wedge I have. I am, after all, a writer.

Thirdly, there is not much inking support in the operating system. With the tablet, I can choose to use handwriting recognition as an alternative to the (crappy) onscreen keyboard. Not here. It’s the keyboard, onscreen only, or nothing.

Fourthly, and another killer. The micro USB port used for charging does not appear to support my OTG cable with the consequence that I cannot add memory sticks to the mix when I want to copy files or even to play media from an old memory stick. That’s irritating. It means I must plug the phone into my laptop and drag files across from that. I can live with that process, but someday, I’ll be out of the office, and someone will offer me a file on a memory stick and …. well, you get the idea.
Minor gripes include the fact that I cannot use Outlook for my email and contacts etc. I must use the Mail, Calendar and People apps. They’re OK, and in some respects, pretty good for a mobile phone, but this is inconsistent with the tablet. Interestingly, I have a POP3 email account. While the Mail app on the Nokia is cool with that, the same Mail app on the Windows tablet won’t let me access the mailbox, so I HAVE to use Outlook.

There is a procedure provided my Microsoft in which you use an Outlook.com account that acts as a middleman to bypass this issue. Essentially, your Outlook.com account retrieves your POP3 mail. You can then retrieve that mail from Outlook.com using IMAP. But I tried to get this to work and after an hour, I gave up. I’ve been working with Microsoft products for over 25 years, and it’s beyond me. Microsoft, please add POP support to your Mail app.

While we’re on the subject of Office, which is provided on the handset, I have found that slightly annoying. A large number of my documents won’t open in editing mode because of versioning issues. What? Work harder, guys. I shouldn’t have to save different versions of files to open on different devices. Although, of course, without a proper keyboard, editing is somewhat pointless anyway.

Having said all that, there are some things I love about the device.

In no particular order, I love the Nokia mapping apps. You can even download the maps to make them available offline FOR FREE. You can also choose to use a surfer dude to voice your navigation to your destination. He signs off with cool ‘No need to thank me, dude. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.’
I like Kids’ Corner. You just enable this feature and decide what your kids can access (games, movies, apps and whatever) and then you hand them your handset. They can only access what you setup. It’s a doddle.

There’s plenty of other stuff to like, and although I could never use the Nokia 1520 as a phone (because for me, it’s just too big for that), I have been carrying it around it my man bag for a couple of weeks and have yet to find a situation when I wished I’d had the tablet instead.

The Lenovo Miix with proper Windows 8.1

Lenovo Miix 2 8

I previously had a ten inch tablet running Windows 8. I found this to be just too big to carry around daily. It didn’t fit in my man bag, and it certainly wouldn’t squeeze into a pocket. Also, Windows 8 was pretty frustrating. eBay came to the rescue, and I managed to liquidate the device for the same as I paid from Argos.

I bought the Miix 2 8 because it was too cheap not to. £199 quid including shipping got me the 32GB version.

Now, a lot of folk bang on about available storage. They complain that after Windows is installed, there’s only 8GB left. Well, there is a hidden recovery partition that provides the fantastic feature of total device recovery for the small cost of about 5GB or disk space. So, zap that. No other OS provides that. Now you’re up to 13GB, which is pretty good in a £200 device. And then you can add more storage through a Micro SD card (which you can move between Windows devices fairly seamlessly) and you can even plug memory sticks into the Micro USB port via an OTG cable.

Many people call storage ‘memory’, which, of course, it’s not. Pundits that cannot differentiate between storage and memory should be ignored.

Note that if you have enabled BitLocker on your SD card, Windows Phone seems unable to read the card. If you don’t know what BitLocker is, read on; this won’t matter to you.

What I like about this device is that because it’s proper Windows, I can, if I like, install any desktop app that I want. I installed Memory Map and then the WW1 trench maps I own. Brilliant.

Note that one MAJOR frustration is that Windows 8.1 does not assign virtual comports to navigational software, such as commonly available GPS systems (including Memory Map). This means that although the tablet knows where it is on the surface of the earth, it won’t share this information with any desktop apps. There is supposedly a workaround piece of software available, but as with the Outlook.com issue above, I was woefully inadequate to the task of getting it to work.

Although the display has a lower resolution (1280 by 1024 I think), it’s actually more usable. 1920 displays sound great, but on a device this small, that can prove a challenge for all but the youngest eyes. It’s good enough to use all the apps and play all my videos.

And, of course, I can pair my keyboard, and mouse, to the device and work on it. I have used it to write some content, and it was fine. I wouldn’t want to write a novel on it (not being flippant here – I actually write novels), but for when the onscreen keyboard is not enough (and for me, that’s anything beyond simple text speak), it’s very handy. Mind you, when you add the 300 grams for the tablet, and 500 for the keyboard and its cover, and whatever for the mouse, you might as well have an Ultrabook and be done with it.

I like the Lenovo. BUT, and it’s a big but, I have never taken it out unless I planned on using it. That’s planned. I take the Nokia out just in case, even though I know I shan’t really need it. But the Lenovo is just a bit big for that. Even at only 8 inches.

Summary

I thought that at last, I had reached computing nirvana. The promised land of the single device. But I think that’s a fairy tale. It doesn’t exist – at least, not yet. So for now, I use the Nokia most of the time to view webpages, watch videos and the like. For work, I use a laptop. And the tablet? Well, that seems to be sitting on a shelf. In truth, I shall probably load Windows 9 onto it when I get the preview, and then we’ll see.