80s Flashback Alternatives:

90s Flashback Alternatives:

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

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:

@jesseswang We are aware and are working towards a resolution. ^AC

— T-Mobile USA (@TMobileHelp) May 7, 2013

Battery Usage right after the upgrade:

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.

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.

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.

Annoying bugs/issues that I experienced with the previous release, now fixed:

• App Crashing every time a song was added to a playlist.
• Gap between songs that made continuous mixes terrible to listen to.
• No  ”similar artists” feature.

Official List of enhancements:

• Totally new app with full support for Android 4.0
• Top-to-bottom redesign
• All-new slide-out navigation
• Even more social – check out friends’ profile pages and playlists on the go
• Artist imagery in high resolution
• Related artist view – available for the first time on mobile
• ‘Extreme’ sound quality setting for 320kbps listening
• So much faster

Features that will be added to the final release:

• Last.fm scrobblling
• Folder support

You can download the preview version here.

Enjoy!

I do not think $9.99 a month is ridiculous for unlimited streaming and caching of content @ 320 kbps OGG Vorbis compression. It is a heck of a deal for the quality offered and the quantity of music, including some rarities and remixes that are sold at over $1.29 per track on Amazon.

I undestand some people like to own and Spotify will not satisfy that requirement. However, it allows you to listen to all types of music, including new content that is published almost on a daily basis in high quality (that last is very important for me), and then you can decide if purchasing it for life is a good option (Amazon, GMusic, iTunes, whatever).

This is my take about purchasing music. First. Very limited content is available in loss-less format. If I am going to pay, might as well be for the best quality available. Second. You cannot resell digital content legally. You take the music with you until your next life.

I have playlists totaling over 5,000 songs in Spotify. I listen to them randomly anytime, anywhere. And continuously add new content. I would be out of my mind if I were to spend $5K in music. $9.99 a month sounds good enough. Good for 41 years worth of music service, and that is if I do not add more songs to Spotify. Unbeatable.

Convenience wins. iCloud you might say? Wrong. You can’t stream with iCloud. You need to have a local copy of the track on the device you will play back.

Comments?

Luckily, there is a way to work it around. Offline playlists. But you need to follow additional steps:

1. Enable the playlists of your choice for offline sync. Wait until they are all synched up (I recommend it as an overnight task).
2. Once all synced up, fire up Spotify.
3. Go to preferences, select “Offline mode”
4. Play your favorite music.
5. The other device can now stream from the cloud without disrupting your session.

I have not tried it with 3 or 4 devices, but the process should be similar. Spotify Premium supports up to 3 devices in offline mode (and the PC or laptop being the fourth in “Online” mode).

Lately, I’ve been hit with a flaw that Spotify needs to address: deleted playlists. Granted, they happened maybe because my son inadvertently deleted them. The fact is, once you delete a playlist, all songs are gone.

There is a way to get it back if you use Spotify on more than 1 PC or laptop:

1. Locate the desktop or laptop that is currently offline that has been synchronized with Spotify previously.
2. If it’s in sleep mode or hibernating force shut/down and restart by deleting restoration data. If you do not perform so, Spotify might fire up right after the device resumes and resync all playlists, removing the deleted one.
3. After restarting disable all network connectivity. Wireless and/or wired.
4. Open Spotify. It will do so in offline mode.
5. Create a brand new playlist.
6. Locate the playlist that was deleted.
7. Copy all the contents to the new playlist you just created.
8. Enable network connectivity.
9. You will see that the deleted Playlist will disappear.
10. Rename the newly created playlist with the name the deleted one had.

There are other ways to restore playlists but unfortunately didn’t apply to me as I have around 50 of them. Not easy to spot the file name of the missing playlist.

Lesson learned: I will always keep more than 1 device synchronized to Spotify.