July 2015

After 10 days of Nexus 6… And it already falling out of my pocket when I got out of the car (it survived, but it’s scratched on the sides)…

All I can say is: I WANT MY NEXUS 5 BAAAAAAAAACK.

So when N5 2015 is released, I’ll have a Nexus 6 for sale!

Why did I switch?

• GPS fucked
• Battery fucked (recharging 2-3x per day)

Comments about the Nexus 6 plus sides:

• big display & resolution is fun,
• it is smooth & fast,
• it does last the day,
• The OLED display light up is really fun (e-ink style), but I wonder how many battery it actually drains and it's usually too short to actually check what notification came in

Downsides:

• I can't type with one hand
• I almost dropped my phone a bazillion times attempting to type with one hand ... My right thumb doesn't reach letter A/Q buttons
• The back is curved, it's thus impossible to put the phone down on a table, and for example pulling down the notification list with only one hand (the phone starts spinning and moving)
• The latex-ish build of the Nexus 5 was really really really cool. The N6 is regular hard plastic.

Holding my N5 now feels kinda cute-sy and small.

Forever in our memory. :(

[caption id=“attachment_7201” align=“alignnone” width=“780”] <3[/caption]

 

✝ 11 July 2015 at the age of 16.

[caption id=“attachment_7203” align=“alignnone” width=“780”] Farewell…[/caption]

 

TL;DR: recalibrate your compass.

I’ve come across an issue for the past 10 days that Waze kept losing its GPS fix. This meant:

• constantly switching between 0 and 120 (or whatever) km/h
• constantly zooming in & out on maps (dynamic zoom level depending on speed)
• being in a field/not on the road for most of the time, or stuck to a location of many minutes ago
• often & randomly losing GPS fix (ie middle of the highway without any buildings blocking the line of sight)
• I could do a 45 minute trip with Waze never getting a GPS fix
• not knowing road issues (accidents, traffic jams ahead, speed traps, etc)

Things I tried:

• nothing changed (no new car window, didn't move my phone location in the car, etc)
• not moving (ie parked car) didn't really improve the GPS fix
• even left my phone with Waze on in the car for 30 minutes parked (got a fix, but later that evening when driving home it started to lose its GPS fix again)
• clear Waze cache
• uninstall Waze completely
• GPS Essentials showed a fix with 3 or more GPS satellites when Waze couldn't get a fix
• I was about to find a way to reset my GPS and/or clear its cache (???)

PS: I have had this issue in the past (I believe with the same phone, a Nexus 5), but it went away after several days.

What I did notice, however, is that in Google Maps the arrow (clicking the pin point button twice or something) was pretty much showing the opposite direction of how the car was moving (thus driving backwards at ~120km/h). This made me think, as I know the GPSes in smartphones are quite cheap and aren’t always on (to save battery – my phone is always being charged in the car though) and the phone uses the accelerometer and other sensors to “guess” current path (or rather, path changes, ie taking a turn or slowing down/accelerating).