Month: September 2011

Review: TPU GEL Case for HTC Desire

The NexusOne had a nice dock, however the dock really wasn’t compatible with any cases. It did have a screen protector on it (from zagg). For my (new to me) HTC Desire I have no dock, so I thought I’d get a case and a generic screen protector. I’d dropped the NexusOne once or twice and cringed as it hit the ground. No major damage was done, but I did add a dent or two.

You can see what I bought above. It was a $2.99USD from an eBay seller, shipping from HongKong included. Based on the stamps on the envelope, it cost about $0.70 postage to ship it.

The case was exactly what I expected. A slightly flexible case with all the right holes for camera, headphones and power. The power and volume buttons are covered but function well. It is a good snug fit over the phone. The case adds some bulk to the phone, but not a lot of weight. I’m still quite pleased with the case after having it on the phone a couple of days.

The case is described as TPU GEL. Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) is a type of plastic, the GEL is I suspect used to describe the flexibility of the case, as there are TPU cases which are hard plastic. Jenn has a Kate Spade silicon case for her iPhone 3G and it’s quite a bit more rubbery than this one.

The use of screen protectors is almost a religious issue. I hadn’t had a phone with a screen protector until the NexusOne, and it came to me with one installed. The HTC Desire does have Gorilla Glass on it, however it isn’t immune to small nicks and scratches.

 

Hopefully you can see the numerous small nicks on the screen in the picture above. You didn’t see them in normal lighting conditions, but the were there. I figured for the price, I couldn’t really go too wrong.

The screen protector is the typical generic screen protector. They include a small cleaning cloth as well. The instructions read a little like engrish, but are understandable. The screen is by no means anti-glare, the resulting finish is high gloss and I did have a few minor bubbles. Compared to the zagg which had a very distinctive feel to it, this one feels just like the bare screen.

I ran into the usual problems when applying the screen protector. The first film you take off exposes the sticky adhesive that will bind the screen protector to the phone. Of course it will pick up every free dust particle in the area – and even a grain of dust will show up as a bubble on the screen. Using the dusting cloth too close to the adhesive is a great way to get more stuff stuck to it. I found that the corner of the protective film used as a pick was useful for clearing dust bits out of the way – even off the adhesive.

One tip I may try in future is to do this in the bathroom. Run the shower to make the room a bit steamy, this will reduce airborne dust. Then make sure you’ve got good bright lighting and go to it. If you can get it perfectly aligned the first time that’s best, the more you mess with it – the more you are dealing with small bubbles. Large bubbles can be worked out prior to removal of the 2nd film.

Looking at the final product of my efforts below, you can see a number of imperfections in the application. Dust trapped below the screen protector as well as a few circular artifacts which are air bubbles. The screen protector also didn’t quite seal down in a couple of corners (likely where I handled it too much). None of the imperfections are highly visible in normal usage.

Apparently Steve Jobs had commented (on iPod’s) that stainless steel looks beautiful when it wears, and I have to agree. The rate at which I seem to change phones lately (about once a year) it is unlikely that I really need to worry about protecting the device all that much. Without any case or screen protection, it is likely this phone will last the 3 years or so before it is completely obsolete – I’ll still feel much better the next time I drop it onto the pavement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your old car: Sell or Trade-in?

Recently I got a new car (my old Civic pictured above). In the past when doing this I’ve let the dealer take my old car as a trade. Generally when trading in a car, you’re at a disadvantage. The sales person is able to manipulate two values: the price of your trade in and the discount from MSRP on your new car. Other interesting twists in the price are financing, administration fee, destination charges, etc. The standard trick in sales is to confuse you a little about the numbers, and try to get you to make an emotional decision on the new car (I really love feature X and can’t live without it).

Generally, selling your car privately will result in you coming out ahead. I had never sold a car privately before, I’d been a buyer in the past and selling isn’t much harder than buying. I’ll try to cover what is needed to sell your car, and later touch quickly on how to decide if you’re better off trading it in.

What you need to sell a car (in Ontario):

  • Used Vehicle Information Package
  • Emissions Test (eTest)
  • Safety Standards Certificate (Safety)
  • Buyer

Technically, you don’t need the Emissions Test or the Safety Standards Certificate – those are requirements for the buyer to have in order to register the car. You could sell the car “As Is” and let the buyer sort these details out.

On the day of the sale:

  • Fill in the ‘bill of sale’ on the Used Vehicle Information Package
  • Complete the Application for Transfer found on the back of the “vehicle portion” of the registration
  • Keep your plates and the plate portion of the registration

Looks pretty easy right? Check the Ministry of Transportation site for additional details.

So how much is your used car worth? There are plenty of places that will charge you for this information, but you can get by without paying anything (much). First check out the CanadianBlackBook site, it has both listings for used cars but a reasonably nice interface to query the trade in value and the average asking price for your car. No registration required.

In my case – a Honda 2004 Civic with 93,000kms came out like this:

  • Trade in: low $4535 high $5885
  • Average asking price: $6725

There isn’t a big delta between those numbers, but keep in mind that’s average asking price. Looking on AutoTrader and Kijiji there were plenty of comparable Hondas being listed for $8000 or more. Speaking of those two sites, they are also good places to go to check for used pricing – but lack useful interfaces to extract the data.

Let’s say the initial research convinces you to sell privately. Go get the Used Information Vehicle Package, it was $20 including tax. This also lists two values for the car, a wholesale and a retail price. In my case:

  • Wholesale: $4450
  • Retail: $6250

Now the buyer is going to need to pay sales tax (%13 in Ontario currently) on the purchase when they register it. Tax is paid on the greater of the sale price, or wholesale.

So now you put on your thinking cap, and decide on a reasonable asking price. Expect to be bargained with. I got lots of low-ball bids, but generally people were starting 20% lower than asking if they were at all serious. I’ll suggest Kijiji is a good site to use, it is free and seems to have lots of people looking for cars. One problem with Kijiji in general is there seem to be a lot of no-shows and people who aren’t serious at all (I got an offer that was %60 below asking). The internet is full of stupid, don’t let it get to you.

Consider seriously getting your car professionally cleaned. Shop around a bit, but you should be able to get it done under $150 taxes included. Buyers will be impressed at how “spotless” your used car is looking. The eTests is about $40, and the Safety was around $100.

I’d suggest getting the Safety done first, you may find that there are unexpected repairs needed. Of course the Safety is only good for 36 days – but unless you’ve set an unreasonable price it’ll sell before that. The eTest might turn up problems not found by the Safety, but it really shouldn’t. Having both the Safety and eTest done will attract more serious buyers and help justify a premium price.

When you write up your ad for Kijiji, make sure you’ve got some nice pictures of the car. Make sure to list the details of the car, any special accessories, the eTest and Safety status, any value adds you might have (winter tires). Spend some time reviewing the various other listings for similar cars and take some notes. You want things to read clearly and provide details (and you’ll be surprised at how poorly people read).

One bit of advice I got from the Ministry of Transport – it’s best to finalize the sale at the service counter so you can see that the new owner has registered the car. Until it has been registered against someone else, the VIN is still tracked to you as the owner.

In my case, it was a learning experience. I might have balked at doing the private sale if I had looked at the price delta between wholesale and retail, but at this point I’m glad I didn’t. I cleaned the car 1st, and assumed the eTest and Safety would go fine. The eTest did, but the Safety turned up a very common problem with my Civic – a cracked exhaust manifold. This is an expensive repair – then again, it’s possible the dealer would have spotted that too and offered me basically nothing for a trade-in.

I had found a buyer via Kijiji in no time at all (less than 12hrs). At the time I hadn’t had the safety done yet, and once that failed things went south with that deal. After some thought, I put it on Kijiji again – “as is” with a lower price to accommodate the repair. Within 36hrs I had a buyer, and the transaction was complete within the week.

Doing a trade-in with the dealer is certainly a lot easier, but selling a car privately is easy enough that I’ll likely do it again.

Nexus One vs. HTC Desire

Since February my phone has been the Nexus One. When I got it I wrote up a brief review where I compared it to the iPhone 3G and the HTC G1, so I guess this is a sort of exit review for the Nexus One as my new phone is the HTC Desire (also known as the Bravo or A8181).

The HTC Desire is almost the same hardware as the Nexus One. The wikipedia page has a good feature comparison so I’ll try avoid going over that ground. You can see from the photo at the top of this post that they share pretty much the same form factor. The Desire has a little bit of the HTC chin design where the Nexus did not. The Nexus notably has the three brass dots for the docking station which the Desire does not.

Looking at the back, things are pretty much identical. The Nexus One has a band of exposed aluminum frame (which can host an engraving), and the power button is slightly different likely due to the small difference in back cover design. The size, general shape, and weight of the phones are basically identical. I do notice that the Desire feels ‘flatter’ for some reason, and it almost feels as if it is a slightly more refined phone.

The Desire has a Super LCD vs the Nexus AMOLED. There is a visible difference here, and one that sticks in my head. In day to day use it isn’t bothersome, but more than just a subtle difference. The Super LCD tends to have washed out blacks, and appears a little bit dimmer to my eye. In every other aspect the two displays are equivalent, enough to make the differences a non-issue for day to day use. The Desire has a gorilla glass screen, where the Nexus did not.

The dock was a nice feature on the Nexus, just drop it in and it charged. I rarely plugged it into a microUSB connector. However the dock also discouraged the use of any sort of bumper case for the Nexus, I’ve got a case on order for the Desire already.

So while these two phones are quite similar, the button layout is not. Let’s compare the HTC G1 (top), Nexus One (middle), and HTC Desire (bottom):

The G1 actually had buttons dedicated to phone functions, it also had 5 function buttons vs. 4 in the later phone. The Nexus had touch sensitive buttons, which took some getting used to after having real buttons. The track ball was transparent and allowed for coloured notifications. The Desire swaps the track ball for an optical track-pad, some people really dislike this but I haven’t found it to be a problem. The back and search button is a rocker, effectively working as independent buttons.

Looking across the layouts, the home button has wandered around in different locations for every one. Search and menu are fairly consistent, but I’m not sure it helps much. Layout changes like this really mess with your head/muscle memory.

In stock form there are bigger differences between the two devices. However, both are fairly friendly to root and flash with your favorite community ROM. I’ve been running CyanogenMod since I got the G1 and continue to do so with the Desire.

Looking at the internal storage is where we notice some big differences. Nexus One: 196MB, Desire: 148MB. Having come from the Nexus meant that I very quickly started to hit out of storage problems, forcing me to move more of my apps to the SD Card. Everything fits without resorting to apps2sd or other hacks.

Speaking of hacks, you can change this if you are willing to flash a new HBOOT – this is of course somewhat scary as messing up HBOOT may be difficult to recover from. It also requires the phone be in S-OFF (developer) mode, allowing modification of /system while Android is running. Contrary to most of the material out there you can run in S-ON mode and have custom firmware, there are some limitations but no deal breakers (my Desire is currently S-ON).