Vorsprung Durch Technik

Pinching the slogan from one of the German car manufacturers, here are the advances in technology over ten years. These two cameras were made in around 2003 (left) and 2013 (right). I've had the one on the left since 2013 and the one on the right since sometime this year.

The camera on the left is 3 megapixel, can run off commonly available AA batteries and offers a whole host of useful features:

• Built in flash
• Movies in VGA
• Various modes including manual, aperture priority etc.
• Intervalometer
• Articulating LCD.
• 100 - 400 ISO.
• 3 megapixels
• AA batteries

The one on the right offers

• Interchangeable lens
• Movies in HD
• Various modes though these can be hard to access
• Can take an external flash
• High capacity battery
• ISO up to 128,500.
• 20 megapixels

What does all that mean? Well, in use I find the older camera much more usable and user friendly. The intervalometer is a pig to access but it works really well. The VGA video mode is supposed to be archaic but quite honestly it saves memory space, speeds up transfers and looks just the same as HD videos for pretty much every application I encounter.

The lack of AA battery support I find rather tiresome. It means that unless I shell out $50 on a second battery, when the batteries die, it's time to go home. With AA batteries, I can root around my glove compartment and find some. I can use rechargeable or disposable if needed. Of course if the camera breaks I could use the AA batteries elsewhere. Not so with the funky Olympus battery.

The lack of an articulating LCD is a hinderance on the latest camera. It's so useful for doing selfie videos, which I do for my occasional Photography 101 series. It is in fact the primary reason I keep the 3 megapixel camera.

ISO - that's just numbers as far as I'm concerned. Once ISOs go above 3200 then it's just silly numbers of increasingly limited practical value. As for megapixels, it's about the same. For 99% of applications more than 3 is a sheer waste of storage. Look at it this way... how many of your own photos do you view larger than the display Facebook makes for you? Exactly!

Having to dig through menues to access common functions - well, I'm not sure about that. With the camera on the right I seem to leave it in iAuto mode most of the time and it keeps getting things right.  The one on the left seems to work pretty well in program mode too. 

As far as interchangeable lenses go, I used to be really into lenses. Now I stick with the one that's on the camera. A longer lens would be useful for some subjects but no so useful that I'd want to part with the $100 needed to buy a secondhand 50-150. Years ago, yes I would have leapt at it but to be honest 90% of photography for me is doable with a 14-45. My Canon has something like a 24-300 zoom on it. 90% of the time it was never zoomed out that far.

The only reason I now use the Olympus for photos is that after I sent the Canon back for a warranty repair, the images were fuzzier than they had been. A cynic would suspect Canon slipped the camera a Mickey in order to force me to upgrade without realizing I have no brand loyalty only cash loyalty.

Have things advanced in the 10 years between the two cameras? I'm going to say no. In fact I think the camera of 10 years ago was a much more capable, more user friendly beast. As far as I can tell, there's not much difference in size between the two either. The lack of AA battery support is something that's a real deal killer for me. I would never buy a camera and pay new money to be fenced in by the manufacturer like that!

The smartphone scam

Everybody has one. The ubiquitous smartphone but put your hand on your heart - do you really need it? I thought I did but it turns out that I really don't, despite 80% of the phones bought annually in the USA being smartphones.

For about 18 months I was very happy with my Nexus 4. That was until the charging port became so loose that no cord would remain seated in the port. I tried everything from tape to play dough to keep the cord in place. Nothing worked! Eventually I got a cordless charging pad and that kept my phone charged until about August of this year. That's pretty much three years after I spent ludicrous money buying the phone. That is, of course where all the fun started!

Figuring it was the cordless charger I bought another one on eBay where the seller promised it would be here by the 30th. I figured I could go without a working phone for a week. Anyway, the week came and went with no sign of a charger. I dug out the old feature phone I used when I was in Britain and put a cheap Tracfone SIM card in it with a service that cost $15 a month instead of the $55 a month I paid for my smartphone connection. It was then that I found that nobody could figure out how to connect the features on my phone to the internet. The Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo etc apps just won't connect. Bang went $15 on that connection. I could have spent $20 on a connection that'd have lasted for 3 months with just talk and text.

A week later, as I'm starting a claim against the seller for a refund, the thing arrived. Excitedly and in eager anticipation I put my smartphone on the new charging pad and waited with baited breath. Yes, it began to charge. Coming back a little while later, the same thing that was happening with my old charger had recommenced. My smartphone charged for a brief while then quit charging. Given that two chargers are doing the same thing, I'm going to say the fault is probably the phone.

Needless to say, the seller of the charging pad was not happy about my neutral rating. Given that he gave a non working tracking number and lied about delivery date from California, I think giving a neutral rating citing delivery issues was fair. Anyway, he decided to try to offer me $1 to withdraw my poor rating. Nope. Not happening!

Having been using effectively a dumb phone since nobody can activate the features (Well, I think they could if they could be bothered) I'm actually finding life without a smartphone is actually quite pleasant. I'd had the sound turned off on my smartphone for a long time in order to avoid the irritating bleeps, bloops and blops it would make. Now my dumb phone rings when somebody phones me and bleeps when I receive a text message. I am not tied to the internet. I have no desire to check email nor browse the internet when I'm out and about.

About the only features of my smartphone that I used regularly were GPS navigation and the camera. Largely the camera has been replaced by the camera on my tablet. GPS is handy on a phone but it really eats the battery so it's not really that practical. I tend to prefer my in car GPS or now that I have to use maps at work rather than electronic navigation, I'm getting on quite well with old fashioned maps.

So, do I need a smartphone? No. I certainly do not. I am very unimpressed by the very short 3 year life of my $300 smart phone. If I bought a $300 TV that died within 3 years I would really be annoyed. I don't get why people are prepared to pay hundreds for devices that seem so throwaway.

Let's look at costs. I paid $300 for my smartphone and I get maybe a dozen calls a month. I paid $55 a month in order to get that dozen or so calls. So, in 3 years I paid 12x55 or $670 a year for the connection for a grand total of $2310 for a phone with features that aren't really necessary. Now let's look at how much my dumbphone costs. I paid $1.07 including tax for a SIM card that fits an existing phone. I can pay $20 every 3 months fir the connection. That's $80 a year for a grand total of $211.07 for three years. That's a saving of around $2,000. Not something to be sniffed at!

Meanwhile, since Blu nor Tracfone can activate the features on the phone, I'm not going to worry my pretty little head about them. Perhaps I would have gone for a new smartphone had not Straight Talk shot themselves in the foot. They sent an email advising me that I needed to renew my connection in order to "play on the internet". That really rang bells because playing on the internet is all I really was doing with my smartphone. That pretty much rankled me. I can play on the internet using my tablet elsewhere. Indeed, several years ago I used to use a MiFi pad for my internet connection and used $20 a month of data.

Comparing US and U.k phone and data deals, the USA is really getting ripped off. I understand that Tesco has a non contract deal where for £7.50 a month customers get 1gb of data and unlimited talk/text. That's about $10. Data is cheap in the U.K.

Of course it wouldn't be fate if three things didn't go wrong so here's the third. With my smartphone out of action, I'm unable to use the flashlight built into it. Thus I had to dig out my old Kmart flashlight with a built in generator. It's one of those lousy LED things and has barely had any use. After pumping it a few times to get light to inspect my tyres at work, the lever stopped working. Bearing in mind this thing never gets used, that's very poor. My mistake was in not buying a regular flashlight. I'd been convinced by the green scammers that a generator flashlight was more environmentally friendly. No it's nit if I have to throw the thing away after hardly any use in order to buy the flashlight that takes batteries that I would have bought in the first place. Now I'm going to have a job to fund a flashlight that takes regular bulbs!