Life » Andy Gibson

New phone – o2 XDA Stellar

Mar 112008

Over 2 years ago I purchased a 12 month contract with O2 which contained an o2 XDA Mini S (Also known as the HTC Wizard), details can be found at XDA Developers Wiki. Now this has been a great little phone (ok, it looks like a brick but I don’t hold that against it), quad band, GPRS, Windows Mobile 5 (and currently 6) not to mention a QWERTY keyboard which is one of the features that drew me to it in the first place.

It has been very durable and survived many accidental drops on to hard surfaces, flash ROM upgrades and other such wear and tear and yet it still keeps on ticking. This is what I like in a phone, in fact this is what I like in electronics, something that can survive without fail and in this day and age such things are becoming fewer in number. Products just to not seem to be made to last any more, we have become a very “disposable” society.

Anyway, I spotted on El Reg today that o2 has announced the newest addition to the XDA family, the O2 XDA Atmos (HTC S730) and so I started thinking about my loyal little Mini S. I compared the spec’s of the Atmos to the 2nd most recent XDA, the XDA Stellar (HTC Tytn II). They both sport the Qualcomm MSM7200 400MHz processor however the Stellar has the better memory (256mb ROM and 128mb SDRAM compared to 256mb ROM and 64mb SDRAM), The camera on the Atmos is only 2 megapixels compared to 3 megapixels on the Stellar. The list goes on, the Stellar is almost better than the Atmos is every way, about the only real upside for me that I could see what the fact it has a numeric pad on it with a slide out QWERTY keyboard.

So, comparison aside I have bought my new phone for the next 18 months, the XDA Stellar won out and will arrive some time this week. I got a good deal on the contract as well making the phone free for only Â£10 extra a month and double the minutes I currently recieve plus free unlimited landline calls thrown in. I feel quite proud of my purchase.

As for my wee Mini S here, well I know one of my ex co-workers had his eye on it, if he doesn’t want it then I guess I have a spare PDA to play with.

Recent find

Life No Responses »

Mar 042008

While cleaning up my flat a little I came across a small A5 sheet of paper that belonged to my father. Before he died he worked for Rank Xerox and was a team leader, the following passage was something he found and printed out to hand to the various teams he worked with.

If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think that you dare not, you don’t,
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t,
It’s almost certain you wont.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,
For out in the world you’ll find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will,
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are,
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.

It has sentimental value but I felt it was a nice thing to have posted on my blog as well.

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Bio

Andy is a software engineer based in Scotland who has over 8 years experience working in Web Development and .NET.

Andy is a passionate developer and is always looking for ways to hone his skills and improve at his craft. He believes that good programmers are also social programmers and as such is involved in the UK development community. At home he is currently the Chairman of Scottish Developers and further afield he has spoken at a number of events across the UK and Ireland.

In his downtime Andy is a computer gamer and keeps close tabs on the games industry. You may even catch him playing Warhammer 40k from time to time ;-)