Roo's View

When it was announced back in September 2011 I was quite excited about the HarmonyLink. I got one as a gift this Christmas and after some initial efforts with it, my enthusiasm is a little dampened, but I still think the device has a lot of promise. There are some serious flaws that need to be addressed by Logitech before it can replace my Pronto TSU 2000.

I was surprised that it didn’t use the same Harmony Desktop software that worked with the 659, then I got excited because it appeared to be web based. The model is log into website, configure your Devices and Activities on the web and sync to your device – nice. Sadly if you try to log into your account on myharmony.com from a non supported platform you get this message:

The following platforms are supported:

Microsoft® Windows XP or Vista with Internet Explorer 7+, or Firefox 3+

Microsoft® Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 8+ or Firefox 3+

Intel Mac OS® 10.4.8+ with Firefox 3+ or Safari 4+

The reason for this is they use a custom browser plug-in to do the initial setup of the device. This sort of makes sense, as the HarmonyLink is a wifi device that needs to be told how to connect to your wireless network. The initial setup seems to be the only time you’ll need the USB cable provided. I also found it a bit uncomfortable being asked by a website to enter my WPA2 password.

Logitech could have made things much simpler. Provided a very simple utility on Windows and Mac OSX to do the device initialization. Of course you need to program the device to enable it for your wireless network, they have all the code they need to do this in a reasonable manner so it seems like just a dumb design decision to include it as part of the browser plugin.

Security fail: The website myharmony.com also wasn’t able to accept a < character in my password. It gets better, the Android app (and apparently the iOS app too) doesn’t remember your password. So you need to type it in from time to time. Strike two for password security. They do require at least 4 characters, I can think of some great four letter words that might fit. So the user is torn between using a strong password or a convenient one. Everyone who might want to use the remote may need to know the password, that’d be strike three on their security story.

Setting up the devices was pretty reasonable, it does require that you know the model numbers of your equipment but will provide suggestions if you’re close to the right name. I had trouble locating the IR4PS3 device (for control of the PS3) in the device database, I ended up succeeding by entering Sony as the manufacturer and IR4PS3 as the model – then the correction offered by the website (IR4PS3/IR4PS3) worked.

The remote is setup around the idea of Activities, such as “Watch TV”. This is a bit different than the flow I have setup with my Pronto so it’ll take some getting used to. They have three basic activities: Watch TV, Watch Movie, Listen to Music. You can have multiples of one type of activity and give them unique names, but they provide only 4 icons – which is very silly given how easy it should be to have many different icons.

They very first time you connect to the HarmonyLink using your Android or iOS device running the remote control app, you’ll likely have a firmware update and a sync of your data from the web. The Android app hung on me during the firmware update leaving me waiting and waiting. It required a reboot of my Android tablet and I was back in business.

I haven’t warmed up to the Android version of the app yet. The power off path wasn’t immediately obvious to me, I’ll have to see how others that get a chance to use the remote once I shake out all the major issues react to it. Responsiveness to button presses is pretty good, there doesn’t feel like there is any appreciable lag. You can edit the button layout, with the exception of the 4 way navigation pad which seems fixed (this is unfortunate as the IR4PS3 mapping for ‘ok’ doesn’t map to X).

I was disappointed to discover that there wasn’t a web UI on the HarmonyLink itself. You must use a supported device (Android, iOS) and run the app. I’ll need to break out Wireshark and take a look at what needs to be done to fix that.

As I started with, I’m still optimistic this is going to be a nice addition to my home theatre – but only once they address some of the shortcomings. Engadget gathered a long list of great comments which felt pretty much on target. There is also a suggestion thread in the Logitech forums. I hope Logitech is listening.

I used to be one of those that strongly believed screen protectors were not worth the money. Over time I had a series a devices which I carried with me daily with no screen protection, sure after a year or two I’d inevitably end up with a small scratch but at that point the value of the device had dropped significantly anyways. The cost of screen protectors seemed outrageous, you could buy from a brand name and pay a big price – or opt for the super cheap knock offs from eBay. I assumed the cheap ones were not worth the money as the name brand ones were 10x more expensive.

The first phone I had with a screen protector was the NexusOne. It came to me with a Zagg invisibleshield installed. The invisibleshield model was one of the ones with the self healing property and had a slightly mottled surface. This felt a little different than a naked screen, your finger had a little drag. It was easy to get used to this. I never bothered to remove the screen protector during the time I had that phone.

Readers of this blog will know that the next phone I had was an HTC Desire. This came with no screen protector. The screen showed a few tiny (nearly invisible) scratches in the Gorilla Glass screen. The scratches were not enough to bother me in day to day use. When I bought a case for the phone from eBay, a cheap screen protector came along with it. I wrote back then that I was pretty impressed with the screen protector as it felt exactly like the screen.

My current phone is a well used Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant (i9000m). It’s got a few nicks and dings, and a handful of fairly deep scratches on the screen. Honestly you don’t notice them in normal use, but you can see them if you look up close as should be evident in the picture below. This is the lower part of the phone close up, a lamp is reflected off the screen but hopefully the scratch marks are clear (a deep one is centered, about 1/4 down from the top).

While I liked the case, it added a lot of bulk to the HTC Desire. This round I decided against a case but thought a couple of bucks was worth getting some screen protection. A screen protector can also help hide some of the existing scratches on a screen (true from my experience).

After looking around a little, I decided on an anti-glare screen. The cost was a little bit more than the clear ones, but less than a cup of coffee more. The youtube video demonstrating it also looked pretty cool. I made the purchase from eBay, but it turns out CitiGeeks has a web store and is based in Canada.

The packaging looked professional and included their logo. What was inside is pictured below.

You get the screen protector, a small card that you use to prevent air bubbles when installing, and a cleaning cloth. They have very good installation instructions on their website, and a youtube video which is very helpful.

The resulting installed anti-glare screen looks very good on the phone, turning it into a matte black surface when off. You can see the anti-glare properties in the photo below giving a soft halo reflection of the light. It also does a reasonable job hiding some of the small scratches, but not the deeper ones. Again, during normal use you don’t see any of the scratches.

I wouldn’t recommend the anti-glare screen having used it for a while. It does cut down on glare, but I find it adds a strange sparkle effect to images. If you look at the picture at the top of this post the right side of the image shows some of this as a multi-color graininess. This is difficult to capture in a picture, but is quite distracting in some situations.

I will recommend CitiGeeks. They provided a 20% discount coupon for my next order (if you search for this coupon online you should be able to find it easily). They also have pretty good email support, even at off hours. When I got my Galaxy Tab, I bought a crystal clear protector for it using the coupon and was able to get a better price than eBay. The clear screen protector is completely invisible, I had two Galaxy Tabs next to each other – one with a protector and one without – you could not tell the difference.

Low cost screen protectors do work well, and pay for themselves with the peace of mind they provide you when you accidentally toss your car keys into the same pocket as your phone. Should you get one? I think it’s still personal preference, I’m sold on them but only if I can get them at very low cost.

I’ve been a big fan of unlocked GSM phones since my first one back in 2009. I’ve also been through a surprising number of different phone since then, but all of them have been 2nd (or 3rd) hand and have been a good price for a phone that still has lots of use left in it. My latest phone the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant (i9000m) is no different, but it came to me locked to Bell.

I purchased the i9000m knowing it could be easily unlocked if you had the right magic. With the stock firmware, if you don’t have the phone unlocked you’ll see what’s pictured at the top of this post when you install a SIM card.

It turns out the forums have a great how to guide, with pointers to an app on the Android Market if you’re afraid of a little bit of hex editing. It should go without saying that I selected the hex editing route. I’ll describe the steps I used here, but  all credit to the folks in the forums for figuring this out.

I will assume that you’ve rooted your i9000m and you’re not incapable of using a hex editor.

Step 1: We’re going to copy some non-volatile memory off the phone that contains the ‘lock’. Perform the following commands on the phone (probably via ADB).

$ su
# cat /efs/nv_data.bin >> /sdcard/nv_data.bin


Now copy that file onto your PC for editing. Make a backup of the original before step 2.

Step 2: Edit that file, I used hexedit on Ubuntu. The lock bit is inside of the byte at 0x181469 in the file. See the green circle below, change that 01 into a 00 and save the file.

Starting at offset 0x181468 you should see the series of digits: ff 01 00 00 00 00 46 46

The XDA post describes it as follows:

There are 5 different types of locks in 5 different bytes

the FF byte should be left alone
the first byte after the FF is the network lock
the next byte is the network subset lock
the next byte is the sp lock
the next byte is the cp lock
the last byte appears to be a data lock.
the 46 46 should be left alone

Step 3: Use the modified file to update your phone. Let’s assume you copied the modified file to /sdcard/nv_data.bin on the phone, and again the commands below are executed on the phone.

$ su
# rm /efs/nv_data.bin
# rm /efs/nv_data.bin.md5
# cat /sdcard/nv_data.bin >> /efs/nv_data.bin
# chmod 755 /efs/nv_data.bin
# chown radio.radio /efs/nv_data.bin || chown 1001.1001 /efs/nv_data.bin
# reboot


That’s it, you’re unlocked. The unlock should persist across ROM (firmware) changes.

References: a great article with pointers to valuable information on the i9000 series.