A Scammer wasting their time [Craigslist]

I decided to post a piece of technology for sale on Craigslist, which by the way has not had much success if compared to any other items I have posted and subsequently sold. At first, one individual texted me as soon as the listing was indexed, and offered to send me money via PayPal, including shipping charges. I expressed that I did not accept PayPal, but a wire transfer instead, and then they disappeared:

First Scammer, Text Meesage

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HTC One S Battery Drains quickly after Jelly Bean upgrade [workaround]

I was very happy to see that the Jelly Bean upgrade was available for the T-Mobile branded HTC One S smartphone. I promptly downloaded and installed. Little did I know I would be having battery drainage issues.

A few days later, when I lost very important calls due to the lack of battery, I decided to ask for a replacement phone. This was after I read mixed reviews which made me think that I somehow had a faulty device (I read somewhere else that the upgrade should be performed with a battery almost fully charged to avoid a “memory effect” from the new OS – haven’t proved that it’s true though).

I opened a support ticket, and fortunately some folks have found certain work-arounds to reduce the battery usage. The same ticket was featured on the TMONews blog.

There is no official fix, however this is how I managed to reduce the power utilization (thanks to several folks that contributed):

  1. Completely Disable Wi-Fi calling.
  2. Disable Google Now, updates and cards.
  3. Disable Google now location report.
  4. Reboot your phone.

You can optionally tailor the background sync of your applications to reduce battery usage. For example, I allow automatic sync for Gmail, contacts, calendar and tasks. The rest is disabled.

It’s disappointing that Wi-Fi calling needs to be disabled as it was working flawlessly on this version; allowing me to go around the house and not losing a call.

HTC One S Battery Usage after the work-around

HTC One S Battery Usage after the work-around

Someone else has suggested a workaround that avoids turning off Wi-Fi calling. I have not confirmed a power saving effect yet though:

  1. Disconnect your phone from Wi-Fi (mobile network only).
  2. Go to Settings > More (under Wireless & Networks header) > Usage…
  3. Make sure “limit mobile data usage” is checked (set the data limit to whatever you’d like), and “show wi-fi usage,” as well.
  4. You will find IPService and IMS Service in the list of apps/processes using Wifi data.
  5. Open each process and enable “restrict background data” on both of them.
  6. Since Wi-Fi calling is by definition is on Wi-Fi, these processes don’t need background (mobile) data. The user hasn’t had any problems making calls or checking voicemail with Wi-Fi calling so far.

I expect T-Mobile/HTC addressing these issues and work on a patch to reduce power consumption. Funny this update was being beta tested since December of 2012.

Update: Seems that T-Mobile has acknowledged the problem, and is working towards obtaining a resolution:

 

Battery Usage right after the upgrade:

All of the sudden Facebook for Android stopped working [U-Verse]

Starting this week, Facebook for Android stopped working while under my home network. At first I thought it was just an issue with my Access Points, and rebooted. It did not fix the problem, so I went ahead and rebooted my main router running DD-WRT. Still with the same issue, I decided to reboot the U-Verse gateway. Unfortunately nothing seemed to fix the problem.

I performed some research online and found out that by changing the MTU size of my main router, it might fix the problem. I went ahead and plugged in 1492 instead of the default 1500; done. It fixed the issue immediately.

I wonder why it started happening all of the sudden as it never gave me any problems with the MTU size of 1500 for at least a couple of years. My guess, AT&T made some changes.

Go to this link for instructions on how to get the best MTU size.

Ping Test

Analog Intercom/Buzzer stops working with VoIP – Future Nine [fixed]

Quick post here regarding my Voice over IP provider, Future Nine, and the Analog Intercom/Buzzer at the front gate of my community. When someone dials-in from the main gate, I need to pick up the phone and press 9 to open it. It has not been working as of late, and the only way to circumvent the challenge was to reset the Linksys VoIP box. It would last a few minutes.

My current internet provider is AT&T U-Verse. The VoIP box is plugged directly to the U-Verse gateway.

Future Nine replied to my concerned and suggested to make these changes under the advanced tab (LAN port, default gateway IP – http://192.168.0.1/admin/advanced)

SIP Port: 15060
Proxy: incoming.future-nine.com:15060

I am currently testing the changes, and will update with results in the next few days.

Update 02/22:

The service is now working properly. It seems that AT&T blocks port 5060 for their own VoIP service.

Spotify does not play track links from Facebook [Solved]

I never had a chance to figure out why I couldn’t play tracks  from Facebook or Spotify Play Button at home. After further research I found out that my DD-WRT flashed router had the “Deny DNS Rebinding” option enabled. Spotify needs to resolve *.spotilocal.com to 127.0.0.1.

In order to resolve it, I added this command to the DD-WRT startup options:

sed -i ‘s/stop-dns-rebind//g’ /tmp/dnsmasq.conf
killall dnsmasq
dnsmasq –conf-file=/tmp/dnsmasq.conf

Everything is good now, fortunately.