HTC Kaiser has an issue when it comes to charging using the in-car charger using the cigarette lighter. It displays as the device is being charged but it doesn’t actually charge the device.

The root cause of the problem is the wiring of the mini-usb port on the Kaiser itself and HTC decided to swap it around; thus it shows the device being charged but it fails to give the power needed for the battery to charge.

As far as I can see, there is neither a software issue nor a hardware issue with the device itself.
Most of the in-car chargers are equipped with the standard wiring and HTC has decided to swap them around.

There are two possible solutions to this problem. I am going to emphasise on the straight forward solution than the long winded one because the second solution involves a technical approach.

Symptoms:

Device charges fine using AC charger.
Device charges fine when connected to a PC using the USB connector provided with the device.
Device charges fine using the in-car charged when its Turned OFF. (To turn the Device OFF, press and hold the ON/OFF button for 10 Seconds)

Device does NOT charge when it is ON using in-car charger, but it displays the device being charged.

Solution:

Buy an HTC branded in-car charger.
Swap the wire around on your current in-car charger. I am not going to go into details here but I will post a guide shortly.

Conclusion:

I am 99% sure using an HTC Branded in-car charger from Expansys will solve the problem. If that doesn’t solve it, contact HTC support.

Popularity: 5% [?]

The price of the iPhone has dropped dramatically last week but somehow I am still not convinced whether to get one or not. I have been talking to many people who think iPhone is the best phone they ever hard, and at the same time I have even talked to some people who hates the device.

When it comes to phone, I go for something out of the ordinary. Well, that’s what people say… but when you look at it, it is not the case. When I chose a phone, I don’t look at the price of the phone, but I always go for one with multiple features spanning from GPS to HSDPA with a QWERTY keyboard.

That is why I have never considered on getting an iPhone because it doesn’t have all 3 above features I look for in a phone.

There are a few more reasons why I don’t like an iPhone, and I could go on and on; here is a short list…

No GPS

GPS is tuning into a must have on every single phone (mainly high end phones / PDAs) and Apple decided to go for cell tower triangulation… I can’t think of any reason why they would go for such thing, when you can easily equip the phone with a GPS chip… Only explanation I could think of is, Apple were so behind on developing the iPhone software, they didn’t have time to write software to work with a GPS chip… Even that sounds lame!

No 3G / HSDPA

I mean, who would have a phone without 3G / HSDPA, Going from 3G to EDGE is like going from DSL Broadband to dialup. If you are one of those people who would use the iPhone just for phone calls and a replacement for an iPod, that’s fine but since Apple is marketing that the iPhone is the ultimate web surfing phone, they should have thought about equipping it 3G than yesteryear EDGE technology.

No Keyboard

Apple is advertising about surfing the net and they didn’t think of putting a keyboard in… It is not a big factor because I do think people would get used to using the iPhone keyboard with a lot of practice.

No Push E-mail

This phone does not support Push E-Mail facility, unless you are on an unlimited data plan with your phone carrier (provider), you are going to have pay a LOT of money for the E-Mail traffic. It all depends on how many mails you get a day and how often you check the mail. If it is me, I definitely will be paying over £100/Month on Data alone!

Cannot change Battery

This is the only phone that I know which doesn’t let you change the battery. When there is something wrong with the battery, you will have to send it to Apple for them to take a look at… And if it’s out of the warranty period, you pretty much have to throw the phone away!

Pathetic Camera

iPhone Camera! Is a Joke, the only word I would describe the iPhone Camera is “Pathetic”. At least they could have put a 3MP camera in it… But No! the mighty Apple wants to save it for the next generation of iPhone…

Since they have dropped the price of an iPhone, I am somewhat tempted to get one, even though I don’t like the phone and currently have one of the best phones in the market (HTC Kaiser) I guess just want to play around with… Or I can go ahead pick up a nice 2611XM Cisco Router from eBay for that money… I got 2 weeks to decide and I would most likely go for the latter.

Popularity: 24% [?]

I have always wanted a portable terminal emulator on my phone, so I could do some quick changes on UNIX Servers / Routers by using my phone than login to the PC and load SecureCRT every single time…

I have come across PockeTTY which pretty much support everything I need and I am rather impressed with this software.

http://www.dejavusoftware.com/pocketty/

Everything is on their website and it is rather self explanatory.

I have tested PockeTTY on HTC Kaiser / TyTN II and it works without any problems so far…

Popularity: 23% [?]

There are many ways to backup your Windows Mobile Phone and the most straight forward way to do it is by connecting to a PC. There are many software out there which can be used to backup a Windows Mobile device without connecting to a PC.

I have come across of Free Pocket PC Backup software called PIM Backup; it does a bit more than just backing up device such as schedule backup which can be handy and you don’t have to worry about when to backup your device…

See the following URL for more info. http://www.dotfred.net

Popularity: 20% [?]