The Beanster Blog

Add iPhone X "horns" to your Android Smartphone Available on GitHub

Coming to iOS11 is a neat feature called Emergency SOS. It is found in its own sub-menu under Settings. Basically, this feature lets you quickly call Emergency Services or your Emergency Contacts. You invoke it by pressing the sleep/wake (power button) rapidly 5x. Don't forget to fill in your Medical ID & Emergency Contact/s (in Health app) so those first responders (police, fire, medics, etc) have some basic information to work with. As an added bonus, invoking the Emergency SOS screen also disables Touch ID temporarily and the device will remain locked until you input your password. Useful if you are confronted by a bad guy (bad cops?). Make sure you have a strong password (an alphanumeric password is better than a simple 4 digit pin), set your phone to lock immediately, and Erase data after 10 failed password attempts as well.

A few weeks ago I purchased a Moto E4 Plus it was a very affordable and capable device but unfortunately, the South East Asia version lacked NFC. Since I will be moving to a place where there would be support for Android Pay I figured I should at least get a device with both Fingerprint and NFC capability. Yesterday I got a Moto Z Play which has NFC. Deleted and packed off the E4 Plus for sale. I got a lot of freebies, a Moto Mod compatible flip case, and a Moto Mod Incipio battery pack. All for 19,999 Php -- a very good deal! The Z Play originally came with Android 6 Marshmallow, but I was able to update it to 7 Nougat and I read that Motorola/Lenovo (oh ya, Lenovo bought Motorola from Google) will be upgrading it to 8 Oreo as well. Hope that pans out!

Nostalgia aside, I thought the Nokia 3310 (at Php 3,000) is a bit overpriced for what it offers and for a spare phone at that. So, I purchased an even cheaper dumber phone. The Nokia 105 Dual SIM is just Php 850 yes less than Php 1,000. It's super basic you can't even sync contacts to it or change the date format, but at least now I have a super cheap phone with super long battery life for emergencies. No fear of data charges since it doesn't even have GPRS. I think this would be a good mobile to deploy to staff/offices that don't need more than basic features. Oh and it has a torch.

Since Microsoft has given up on Windows Mobile, I guess it is time to reset and get rid of my Lumia 650 Dual SIM as well. It was fun while it lasted. Devices Control Erase Device Device Deleted

Release notes here

I noticed something as I was fixing my mom's Netflix subscription. She had recently done the 1-month free trial using her iPhone. Meaning her subscription would be coursed thru Apple iTunes or AppStore. Netflix Philippines pricing direct from their website. 370Php, 460Php, 550Php Since I already pay for Netflix, I was surprised that the prices were not the same! Apple charges extra on top of Netflix's fees. BAD APPLE. If you subscribe via Apple, you pay 19Php, 29Php, 39Php extra on top of Netflix's monthly fee. I canceled her trial subscription using iTunes prior to the end of the trial date and then went to Netflix.com to restart her trial direct with the streaming service. For most people, it would be more convenient to subscribe via Apple but I don't believe we should pay more if we can get it for less. Here is Netflix's help page on canceling iTunes billing: How do I cancel iTunes billing for Netflix?  https://help.netflix.com/en/node/27460 

Way Out West - Tuesday Maybe = https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/tuesday-maybe/id1226686015

I don't have a BPI Express account, so I knew this was a phishing email from the get go. When we look at it on a desktop browser we see the email address has been masked/tampered with When we hover (DO NOT CLICK) on the link we can see the URL is suspicious as well. DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS IN EMAIL. IT IS BETTER TO GO TO THE WEBSITE ON YOUR OWN AND NOT RELY ON LINKS BE WARY OF ATTACHMENTS, EVEN FROM PEOPLE YOU KNOW. TURN ON "TWO-FACTOR" AUTHENTICATION IF AVAILABLE. IF YOU FELL FOR A PHISHING EMAIL CONTACT YOUR BANK (OR THE WEBSITE) ASAP. The scary part is when viewed on mobile (in this case GMail for iOS) it looks ok but it is not, more and more people just do stuff on their mobile and this might fool some.

MOST IMPRESSIVE!

Microsoft recently announced their Surface Laptop . The device looks great on video and specs wise it seems like a capable device for the target market (education / ultra-portable) however I am a bit uneasy about the move to a single USB port and the fabric on the keyboard seems like an impending hygiene issue. I am not sure how I feel about Windows S as their response to ChromeOS. It remains to be seen if they will make a dent on Chromebooks market share.  Personally, I would opt to upgrade to the Pro version anyway to get the most out of Windows 10. Let's see what MSFT's partners will cook up now that Microsoft has unveiled their new "hero device". I really think APPL is missing the mark by refusing to add touch capability to their MacBooks screen, the TouchBar isn't really compelling (yet), and I think the devices on the Windows side should capitalize on this. In the end, competition is always great for the consumer :-)

I've been an off + on podcaster for a few years. You can check out my electronic music appreciation podcast = Thank You For The Music (shameless plug). From the start, I wanted to do enhanced podcasts just like the wonderful podcast Coverville . Enhanced podcasts add chapter support with different artwork per track and even URLs to podcasts. A really useful feature IMO. In recent years it seems both iTunes + Apple's Podcast app support for enhanced podcasts have become worse. iOS I've been testing the Podcast App and it doesn't even display the chapter artwork properly. It works well on Downcast App. Desktop In iTunes 12.6 as you can see the controls are hidden, difficult and don't work very well. The chapter artwork also doesn't change except on the mini player view. WEAK!!! Downcast for macOS has better support Enhanced Podcast support vs iTunes 12. It seems third party devs may be following Apple's lead, OvercastFM my current a...

adbl.co/Thrawn Enjoying the audio book very much!

enrolled my @Lumia 650 to @windowsinsider #fastring hope to get 15063.138 before Easter hehe. #windowsmobile — Vincent B Castro (@bnycastro) April 12, 2017 Well after only a few hours of my above tweet hoping to get Windows 10 Mobile Build 15063.138 it is now downloading on my device hehe. I did have to install build 15063.2 before 138 appeared under updates. Will report back on how the update goes... 

Seems I saved 4.7Gb after upgrading to 10.3 -- VBC

The extras are pretty cool!  -- VBC