Monday, July 28, 2014

Lycamobile US Pay As You Go Prepaid SIM Review

I've had my Lycamobile US Pay As You Go Prepaid SIM for approximately 8 months after purchasing the SIM while I was in Las Vegas on a trip. I used to have a RedPocket Mobile US prepaid SIM but I found that based on my usage, I couldn't continue to maintain the RedPocket Mobile SIM because with an annual renewal of $100 and at $0.10/minute to call the US/Canada (among other countries), I wasn't reducing the balance enough in the span of a year to justify renewing it. If I couldn't use $100 at a rate of $0.10/minute in the span of 1 year whenever I (and my friends/family) visited the US, there was no way that I could use over $100 the following year if I renewed it by adding $100 since the previous balance would carry forward for another year and be added to the $100 that I just added to the balance.

I did some research prior to my trip to Las Vegas for another Pay As You Go Prepaid SIM with a low per minute rate and a low renewal rate or better terms to keep the US SIM active. I came across Lycamobile US which has favourable terms in order to keep the US SIM as well as the phone's balance active and it also had a very low per minute cost using direct dialing. The per minute cost at that time (which I was interested in) was $0.02/minute to make a call to a US number, $0.02/minute to receive a call while in the US, $0.03/minute to make a call to Canada, $0.04 per message to send a text message to a US number, and $0.16 per message to send a text message to a Canadian number. The current Lycamobile Pay As You Go prepaid rates are $0.05/minute to make a call to a US number, $0.05/minute to receive a call while in the US, $0.06/minute to make a call to Canada, $0.04 per message to send a text message to a US number, and $0.16 per message to send a text message to a Canadian number. Since it offered direct dialing at very low rates, there was no need to remember any calling card number or PINs prior to making an outgoing call.

In order to keep the SIM and balance active, Lycamobile only required that there be a billable charge every 90 days. I thought that this might present some problems but Lycamobile also roams in many countries (including where I live in Canada) so I could use it and create a billable charge at the higher rate for roaming in Canada (~$1.84/minute outgoing, $1.50/minute incoming, & $0.64/SMS) if I didn't go to the US in the span of 90 days. The current terms stipulate that any balance remaining on your account after 90 days don't rollover regardless of whether there is a billable charge on your Lycamobile account or whether you top up your account.

I purchased a Lycamobile SIM from a store a few hours after arriving in Las Vegas and inserted it into my unlocked GSM phone when I arrived at the place that I was staying in Las Vegas. When I powered on the phone, I waited a few minutes so that my phone could acquire/register onto Lycamobile's network. I then called 622 and waited to be prompted to enter the ZIP code. I entered the ZIP code for the place that I was staying at in the US. A few seconds later, I received my new phone number on the new Lycamobile SIM that I purchased. I then purchased $10.00 worth of airtime and placed it onto the phone.

The next thing that I did was to register my account on their webpage so that I could manage/view information regarding my account. The webpage for this is *HERE* and the only thing required to register on their website is the phone number and the PUK code for the phone (which was found on the large SIM card where you broke/removed the miniSIM, microSIM, or nanoSIM from this card). One of the things that I like about logging into the My Lycamobile website is that the website shows detailed call logs. These detailed call logs show outgoing phone numbers and dates/times/duration/costs of all calls. The incoming calls are shown as with your phone number in the "Called Number" field/column. The webpage also shows the current available balance on the SIM. The only information that isn't shown on the account webpage is the expiration date so one must manually calculate it based on the last billable charge in the "Call History."

One of the things that I like is the fact that it roams in Canada and allows for the use of free system "star" commands that allow users to check the balance by dialing *611# and also allows for the display of the phone number by dialing *613#. The only negative thing about the *611# command is that it (like the "My Lycamobile" website) doesn't display the expiration date.

The Pay As You Go service with Lycamobile includes call display and voice mail. The voice mail can be deactivated. I deactivated the voice mail on my account since I didn't want people leaving me voice mail messages.

During my usage of the Lycamobile prepaid SIM, I didn't have any issues with it. The only issue that I experienced was that sometimes when going from one country to another country, it will display an "Inactive SIM" message for a few minutes prior to acquiring/registering onto the network of the country. I corrected this by turning off the phone, waiting about 1 minute, and powering it back on again and waiting a few minutes.

Because I only use my Lycamobile US SIM when I (or my friends/family) visit the US and there is no expiration date shown on the phone or on the My Lycamobile website, the way that I keep track of the expiration date is to add 90 days to the date of my last usage and record the date in my agenda with a few reminders prior to that date. I then modify this date as it becomes necessary. According to the Lycamobile's website (section 3.4), a system generated SMS and/or e-mail is supposed to be sent to the user when the phone reaches 40 days and 60 days of inactivity but I have never received an SMS or e-mail to indicate this despite going over 60 days of inactivity with the phone.

The new terms and conditions mention that when topping up, any amount that remains from the top-up after 90 days is lost. You can find this information in section 4.6 on their terms of usage *HERE*. For me, this is a major issue and I can't really recommend Lycamobile to travelers because of this change in policy.

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Monday, July 21, 2014

Sony DVD Player DVP-SR310P Review

I have a lot of DVDs and even though I have Netflix, sometimes I want to watch one of my DVDs so I decided to purchase a very inexpensive DVD player for my television. I could have purchased one of the Blu-ray Smart DVD players that comes with various applications such as Netflix but since I already have a few options to view Netflix on my television and didn't want to spend any extra money for Blu-ray compatibility when I have absolutely no Blu-ray movies, I opted to purchase a simple and inexpensive DVD player.

The DVD player that I opted to buy was a very inexpensive Sony DVD Player DVP-SR310P. There were actually 2 DVD players on sale that day at roughly the same price (~$25+taxes) but I opted to go with the Sony primarily because of the "Sony" name (even though I'm not what I would consider a Sony fan-boy). The other DVD player was from a "no-name" company and had an HDMI output. This Sony DVD player has only the RCA output as well as component output. Since I didn't have any component cables, I was more interested in the RCA phono output. I was a little worried that I didn't have any spare RCA phono cables lying around but the Sony DVD Player DVP-SR310P includes the RCA cables (yellow for video and red/white for audio). In fact, the unit includes everything to get started (minus the television of course). In includes the DVD player unit itself, the remote control, two AA batteries for the remote, and the RCA cables to connect to the television set.

The user's guide/instructions for the DVD player can be found *HERE*.

Even though the remote control has settings that allow you to use it as a remote control for your television set (and from other manufacturers), I wasn't able to get the remote control to work with my non-Sony television even though the manufacturer of my television is one of the listed manufacturers on the remote control instructions.

According to the specifications, the DVD player supports:
Video: MPEG-1 (Cyber-shot data)/MPEG-4 (simple profile)/Xvid Photo: JPEG (DCF format) Music: MP3 (except for mp3PRO)/WMA (except for WMA Pro)/AAC/LPCM/WAVE
Supported extensions: “.avi”, “.mpg”, “.mpeg”,“.mp4”, “.jpg”, “.mp3”, “.wma”, “.m4a”, “.wav”
Supported discs: DVD, DVD+RW/+R/+R DL (+VR mode), DVD-RW/-R/-R DL (VR mode/video mode), Music CD/Super VCD, CD-R/-RW

I tested it with DVDs and DVD-R and didn't have any issues playing them whereas my older DVD player would give me an error message with some of my DVD-R videos.

One of the features of this DVD player is that it has fast and slow playback with sound. However, the fastest that it can go and play sound is 1.4x so I generally don't use it. The minimum slow playback speed that it will support and play sound is 0.6x. The increments for the playback with sound go up/down in 0.2 increments so the possible options are 0.6x, 0.8x, 1.0x, 1.2x, and 1.4x.

One of the features that I like about this DVD player is that it has multiple disk resume. What this means is that if you're inserting DVDs into the player and you stop the DVD at a certain point to insert a different DVD, the DVD player will remember the point that the other DVD was stopped at and resume from that point on (if you press "Play" on the remote control). I tested this with 4 DVDs, inserting, removing, swapping them in and out and the DVD player remembered the exact point where each of the DVDs were stopped and resumed from that point onwards. I'm not sure what the maximum number of DVDs are in which it will resume playback but the DVD player that my parents have would only resume the previous DVD inserted so when you insert the third DVD, their DVD player would forget the playback location of the first DVD if it was later reinserted.

My only negative point about this DVD player (excluding the fact that even though my television manufacturer is listed on the remote control instructions but the remote control doesn't work with my television) is that I find the ejecting of the tray to be a bit loud when I compare it with the older DVD player that my parents have or to my computer's CD/DVD tray.

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Monday, July 14, 2014

Blackberry 10 Software Update Available for 10.2.1.2977

There was a minor software update on my Blackberry Q10 a few weeks ago. As you can see, the file size was only 17MB in size.

According to the screenshot, the software update is to version 10.2.1.2977.

The update process was straightforward and after accepting the update, I was presented with the screenshot below asking me to restart the device.

After my device restarted, my device was updated without any issues. While my device restarted, even though my Blackberry Q10 still had over 80% power remaining, I plugged it into the electrical outlet in order to be on the safe side.

In terms of the update, I've been using it for a few weeks now and I don't notice anything significant. The two major issues that I have with my Blackberry Q10 still exists. It still gets unusually hot after using an internet enabled application for a few minutes and the battery doesn't seem to last as long as it used to back when it was running a version of Blackberry 10.1.x

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Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Android 4.4.4 Available for LG Nexus-4

After updating my LG Nexus-4 to Android 4.4.3, a few weeks later, I received another notification on my LG Nexus-4 informing me that there was a new system update available. The update that was available was Android 4.4.4.

The updating to 4.4.4 was roughly the same steps as when I updated my LG Nexus-4 to Android 4.4.3. After clicking on the "Restart & install," my Nexus-4 rebooted and began the upgrade/installation from 4.4.3 to 4.4.4.

After the updating process completed, my Nexus-4 rebooted automatically and because my Nexus-4 is encrypted, I was presented with the prompt asking me to enter my decryption password. When I entered my decryption password, my Nexus-4 continued to start and my Nexus-4 was updated successfully to Android 4.4.4.


After my Nexus-4 was updated, I tested Android 4.4.4 briefly and all the applications that I had installed on my Nexus-4 and used on a regular basis started without any issues. In terms of any noticeable changes, I didn't notice any difference between 4.4.3 and 4.4.4 in such important things as wireless strength or battery life.

If you have any comments/questions regarding this blog entry, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section below. Please note that the comments are moderated and any comment containing a URL link (whether embedded or not) will automatically be flagged as spam and will not be posted.