Goodbye Nokia, Hello Android and Nexus S

These are my thoughts as I'm waiting for my shiny new Nexus S, which I ordered from US a few days ago, to land in Israel.

I've been a Nokia kind of guy for many years now, since my first mobile phone. Nokia phones had a simple button layout, consistent user interface and menus which made it easy to use whatever model you had. When I looked for my first smartphone a couple of years ago - I eagerly waited for the Nokia 5800. It's a great phone which served me well despite a few quirks, but now is showing its age and not in a way that some next model can fix.

What I mean is that as years went by, smartphones became more and more our mobile personal computers, where most important are not just the original hardware and software but the apps you install later. And the Symbian OS Nokia uses is rather old and hard to develop for, so almost none of the apps developed in the last year or two that I wanted could be installed on my phone. And even though I don't know much about Meego, the mobile OS Nokia will using for future smartphones - I think it will be too late. All apps today are developed for iPhone and Android first due to their market share, and it's hard for me to imagine what technical advantages might the Linux-based Meego have over Andorid, which is undergoing such fast development and improvement.

My parents are still using the simpler Nokia "feature-phones", since they are much more comfortable with the ordinary keys rather than a touchscreen, and there Nokia might hold its dominance for some time. This is a low margin market which addresses the much larger world population that can't afford the luxury of a smartphone. Yet as all technology goes, this will also get cheaper in a very short period, and soon enough I think there will be cheap Android based smartphones available for this large market.

So I say goodbye to Nokia and hello to Android. What would you suggest for the eager owner of a fresh Android phone? What are the must-have apps or settings I should start with?

Photo storage on the go

I love travelling, and when I do - I always take a camera with me, capturing the places I've seen and moments I want to remember. For the past two and a half years I've had the 400D Canon DSLR and its counter is getting close to the 20,000 photos mark. Those are a lot of great memories, but also quite a bit of storage space, especially since I always shoot in RAW format to have the flexibility for future editing. I some cases, I actually shoot RAW+JPEG, so that I can easily browse and share photos during the trip using the JPEGs, and the RAW files are for later storage and editing when I get back home. And when the trips get longer, there's the question of how to store all those photos on go.

The simple choice at first is just having more and bigger memory cards. I got to carrying 3 cards with 4Gb each, and this would usually be sufficient for my normal two-week trips. But there's a limit, and when I was preparing for my 7 months long trip to South East Asia last year, I had think of another way. 

First of all, just buying more and more memory cards is expensive, hard to carry and manage, and I wouldn't want to store too much on a single card. A common solution is to have a portable hard drive - it's easy to use, has plenty of storage space, reliable, relatively inexpensive and useful in itself in daily life even after the trip. However, since I wasn't carrying a laptop this meant relying on external computers, which isn't trivial on a trip to SE Asia. Internet Cafes are usually not hard to find on the beaten track of trekkers, but the quality of computers varies greatly and many of them are infected with myriad viruses transmitted by different USB devices. So finding a reasonable computer, scanning it for viruses and using it to copy the photos from the card to the hard drive it a rather long and annoying procedure.  A bigger problem was the longer treks, such as the Annapurna Circuit, which take several weeks with no computer access.

My solution was a portable hard drive with a twist, in a metal case with an internal battery and a built-in card reader - Nexto ND2700. The main advantage of this device is that is can directly copy photos from the memory card, without the need for a computer or even electricity. The charge is sufficient to copy some 80Gb of photos, which gives you more than enough travel time between recharges. The device itself is basically a sturdy metal case with a laptop hard-drive inside - it's even easy to open the case and replace it. And besides travelling, it is useful as a regular portable hard drive with a USB connection. I've had it for a year and a half now, and the only disadvantages I can think of are that it's a little more cumbersome to use than a regular portable drive, since it has it's own power button; and the price - when I bought it, the 250Gb model cost about twice as much as simple hard drive with the same capacity.

So who would I recommend such a device for? It is mostly useful if you take lots of photos, usually RAW on a DSLR (since JPEGs from compact cameras take much less space) and might travel for several weeks at least with no laptop or reliable access to computers. Otherwise, a regular portable hard drive would probably suffice.

Shopping and Shipping from US to Israel

It is often when purchasing something, especially electronics, that I would much prefer to buy in the US than in Israel. It's usually because the price difference is so large (a Canon lens I just bought costs 440$ in US and 670$ in Israel) or because some products are sold in US only (like the Nook eReader). In any case, shipping is a problem, either because a direct UPS delivery to Israel is quite expensive, but more often because the stores would only ship inside the US.

For a few years now there exists a company that solves just this problem - Mustop (they have merged with a similar company called Usonestop). The idea is simple - you register, and get your own unique address in the US, which is where you ship you purchase (they have warehouses in New Jersey). More often than not, the stores will also have free shipping to a US address. It's also recommended that you forward to Mustop your purchase receipt email. They receive your package and forward it to your Israeli address using DHL. 

The shipping price is very reasonable, and for larger purchases is quite worth it - there's a 15$ handling fee, plus a shipping price based on the package weight and volume (details here). They recommend you contact the store and ask for as compact a package as possible. You still have to consider the customs and VAT costs in Israel of course, but it is often much cheaper than to buy in Israel (and there are no customs for photographic equipment for example).

So - happy shopping everybody!