War Robots Weapon Collection List

Feeling the power of a weapon blast? Gamers of War Robots would love to blow the opponent mech to bits! Who wouldn't want a go at destroying stuff without actually breaking anything in the house. Consider it a form of stress relieve! Playing the game and maximizing the potential to go dish out damage to your opponent by selecting the available weapons in your inventory list is part of the fun of playing robot mecha games. Going through the weapon list in the app wasn't quite so easy. So I created a quick reference list of the available weapons from the game.

The choice of weapons is up to individual style and of course affordability based on your currency that you have. Silver priced weapons were the easiest to procure. Next easiest would be the workshop point types, the gold price and the most difficult would be the jigsaw component priced versions.

War Robots Collection List

Variety is the spice of life. Well in this case, the War Robot game. Similarly like Mechwarrior, there were quite a variety of robot mecha to choose for your game pleasure. While in Mechwarrior, you could practically tried out all the robots in the instant action mode. Unfortunately it was not the case for the War Robots mobile app game.

I would say only 10 of the robot mecha (price tag in silver) were easily obtainable while the rest you litterally have to slog through to get it. With the worse ones being the Korean robots which was virtually impossible to get unless you were willing to pay real money for it. Of which I believe was totally not worth it at all.

War Robots by Pixonic

Having given up Pokemon Go, I decided to play War Robots by Pixonic. This game reminds me of good old Mechwarrior game but with some differences. This is a pure online battle with other players around the world. Customizing your bots require accumulating various currency and purchasing robots and weapons. Like most advance online game, it gets more difficult as the game advance.

So after about nearly a month of whacking other people’s robots in a multiplayer environment, I would say this game is actually quite tough and grueling. Playing a winning battle requires a good mix of strong robots and weapons and some good luck pairing with good players.

Quitting Pokemon Go

Having played Pokemon Go for the better part of 1 year and 2 months, I have decided to call it quits. It’s been quite an interesting game, but Niantic kept changing its game. The death knell came when one of the updates cause the power up to be less effective. Normally the power up increase the Pokemon CP by between 30 to 40. But the update cause the CP to increase only about 20. As you try to push the Pokemon strength and power to higher and higher CP, it takes more candies and stardust as well available powerup arc to do so.

Pokemon Go new gyms strategy for the lone casual player

My earlier post about @PokemonGoApp was an adverse reaction to the new gyms. For a lone casual player, playing this Pokemon Go game can be frustrating. No doubt the idea from Niantic is to have players socializing more and team up to take down gyms on a cooperative effort; it is not always the case for everyone. I don’t have friends that have any interest in this game at all except one and if we get together it is not to play this game.

One of the core game play is of course battling out rival teams and holding a gym to collect your gold coins rewards. With the coins collected you could exchange it for upgrading your backpack storage, Pokedex storage as well as other goodies including having a change of wardrobe for your trainer!

Fixing Pokemon installation and Failed to Detect Location problems

So the Pokemon go crazed is sweeping over the world! And here is no different when the app was launched recently. However trying to get it to work was another matter. This new type of augmented reality games required quite an advance mobile phone in order to work. Although it the Pokemon website it said it need minimum Android version 4.4, the Google Play store didn't allowed me to install into my Samsung Note 2. I did finally found a way to overcome it.

Celcom XPAX Prepaid SIM card must be upgraded to get 3G

I decided to pop in to a Celcom centre to try to find out why my XPAX 24 could only get 2G/EDGE internet data. A quick check with my phone number and it showed up in their terminal that my SIM card was only meant to be used as 2G.

I found it odd that the Celcom shop was selling 2G XPAX prepaid card when everyone else, Maxis, DiGi, etc were selling 3G enabled prepaid SIM cards. It seems like Celcom stock is slower moving compared with the other telcos. In order to have 3G/HSPA+ internet data connection, I need to change and upgrade my SIM card to a 3G version. And the shop that sold it to me didn't even informed me about it! And when I called up Celcom support sometime back, they were just as befuddle and didn't understand what was my problem. Why is it Celcom support so poor? Anyway,...

Android Phone is the most popular OS for Smartphones

The Android onslaught has made it the most popular smartphone O/S. The recent IDC figures shows a whopping 79.3% market share domination! Leaving the other competing platform in the dust. The nearest contender from Apple IOS only managed a miserably 13.2% market share. And my second favourite Windows Phone platform still has a lot of catching up to do standing at 3.7%.

Surprise! Google Drive Storage is now 15GB

This came a surprise to me when I found that I have 15 GB free Google Drive storage. However after digging around the information online and on closer inspection of my account, this was not really an increase but rather a combining of storage from the various storage. Some blogs said the Drive storage account was increased because it felt like you gained 15 GB of Google Drive / Picasa storage and 15 GB of Gmail storage. So let's look at this closer.

Which #Android Phone Brand You Like?

Each Android phone maker is not the same. There is HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Sony, and various others as well as the made in Malaysia CSL.

I may not have tried them all, but having owned a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro, briefly with HTC Wildfire and now using HTC Cha Cha, played with my sis-in-law's Samsung Android mobile phone.

I find I liked HTC. The interface and layout is much better thought out. The battery is a little more lasting but still gets drained during heavy usage. And there is a lot more widgets available for the android desktop and the contacts has better integration not just with Google, but also with Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps in future it might integrate with LinkedIn now that they have IPOed.

Anyway I'm enjoying my new HTC Cha Cha so going to tango with it while I figure out what to do with my Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro.

---[update 11/10/11]---

Yes, success! Updated sony xperia x10 to android 2.1

This time round managed to update my Sony Xperia X10 Mini Pro from Android version 1.6 to 2.1. It was slow, took about less than an hour but it was done. Customizing and making work as before is going to take longer as i have to set up my gmail account, office account, facebook, twitter, etc plus downloading the apps from Google market again. Not to mention my Angry Birds game. Now i've to start from level 1 all over over again! Bummer! At least the Sony Xperia X10 mini pro is finally updated!

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro Review

Almost updated my sony xperia x10 mini pro

Attempted again to see if i could update my sony xperia x10 mini pro. Saw some progress at the update progress bar so i know it is working.
Didn't have time as i wanted to go home and the updating looked real slow. So decided to kill the update and try it again later.
At least i could see the progress bar today. The previous day was terrible with nothing happened at all. So hopefully after dinner i will give it another try.
I think it will need a good and smooth internet connection to update well. And today's streamyx  internet connection seemed much better.
Once the sony xperia x10 is updated i'm going to lose those google app for android 1.6. Those were nice to use but the authors did not make any updated versions for the latest android 2.x O/S. But from what i learned there were some new functionality such as facebook contact sync with the main contacts and various other updates.
Will see once i've updated.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro Review

streamyx internet lagging slow

I'm getting a lot of drop connection from streamyx again today. Either the websites I'm visiting are slow or streamyx has a bad international connection, or perhaps they are in cahoots with BN trying to prevent people from watching opposition video or what I don't know. I'm just trying to do some research and perhaps even trying to update my Sony Ericson Xperia X10 android software to version 2. I think I will do the update next time. For now the lagging part is just too slow!

Android 2.1 for Sony Ericcson Xperia X10

Finally saw the new working version of Android 2.1 for Sony Ericcson Xperia X10 on my brother-in-law's phone. He bought it for his wife to replace her old phone. The size is nice for her but she need to get use to the touch screen though.

Anyway, I wanted what were the major difference with the current Android 1.6 version of my Xperia X10 mini pro. From what I could, is mostly cosmetic wise as the usage is still the same basically with all the same function. However I'm still considering it,as some software that I have runs only in Android version 1.6. So I'll just have to think about it.

[update]
Finally updated my Sony Ericcson Android version to 2.1. It works much better now though the version is still behind 2.3 versions flying around in the market. However for the SMS text message, I'm not able to forward them. The message software will crash. The workaround way would be to copy and paste to a new message. Probably a bug in the software. Otherwise, overall the new updated version functions pretty well.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7

Although I've owned a couple of devices made by Microsoft, so far my experience with these portable device from Microsoft has not been good. Now Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is the updated version of the Windows Mobile Operating System platform which was an update from Microsoft Pocket PC which was an update from Windows CE. And my first encounter with Windows CE way back then wasn't really great and the shortlive smartphone I had with O2 mobile phone running on Windows Mobile just didn't cut it either.

Just because you have been living and working with a desktop or laptop with a Microsoft Windows interface didn't mean you should do the same with a portable mobile device. It just ain't the same. Heck, the way Microsoft Phone work is rather clunky in comparison with other mobile phone O/S
platform is just way suck.

So I doubt the rebranded Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and repackaged mobile won't do much to entice me to get one or recommend it to anyone real soon. In fact it shall be contrary.

The way the software works by segregating the memory between apps and data makes for memory bloat. Not to mention software bloat as well. In order to run the bloat, a powerful CPU and higher memory is required to run Windows based mobile phone. Making a phone look so nice is really a CPU killer.

I noticed other platform like Symbian, Palm and now Android phones, do not require as much heavy duty hardware to run as compared with Windows Phone 7.

And of course, to make a mobile phone to be really useful is the availability of software apps. With the free to low cost software available for Palm and Android phones makes these phones very attractive indeed.

So I guess in the end Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is going to have a very hard time trying to regain back their market share. Besides Microsoft has botched their marketing and development. Take for instance their failed Microsoft Kin mobile phone aiming at the youth market which took them 2 years to develop and after launching and selling it for 48 days, they pulled the plug on it. Granted they got lots of mullahs, but no company can botch up their marketing so many times and there is repercussion on so many failed attempts that you may just avoid buying their items in case of failed products that would not have as much support from the market such as 3rd party apps and that would mean wasting your hard earn money.

Samsung Galaxy 5 I5503

This looks like the cheapest Android Phone that I've come across. The Samsung Galaxy 5 I5503 going for RM699 (US$227) sold by PDA Expert Mobility in Digital Mall sec 14 Petaling Jaya. Even at this price it got GPS and WIFI.

No chance to look at the android phone as I was just passing through and just grabbing their price list to see what is their latest PDA phone offering of Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Android phone, and Java phones.

Ok, found some specs and it goes something like:
Samsung Galaxy 5(I5503) will come packed with a standard 2.8 inch QVGA touch sensitive display, a 2MP camera, Samsung’s unique Touch Wiz UI 3.0, 3G connectivity , Wi-Fi, GPS, a 600MHz CPU , a standard 3.5mm audio output jack, and an expandable MicroSD card support.

Here's a nice little picture of it.

Blogger Droid not so good idea

Switching over from my Palm Centro phone to my Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android phone, I found a little nifty software called Blogger Droid by Anders Hedström from the Android Market. I thought it was great to do some mobile blogging on the go but turn out using this piece of software wasn't as great as I thought it would.

Although it has some nice function like shrinking the mobile photos before you post it up thereby saving you some precious data charges especially since I signed up the minimum Maxis 100MB data plan you can't just go blasting away as though you got a lot of data transfer.

However this software is still very buggy and found out that I lost 3 set of posts when I tried to do some mobile blogging. Initially when I tried Blogger Droid it was pretty ok, save for the irritating ads which took up a fair bit of display asset on my Sony Ericcson Xperia X10 mini pro Android phone. I thought I just bear with the advertisement if it could serve my mobile blogging needs.

But the lost posts was really frustrating and wasting my time composing anything that got lost along the way. It should save a copy in the Android Phone memory so that even if it was not able to post successfully it should still keep a copy in the Android phone memory. It only kept the draft copy, and after you have made a post it erases the stored memory. So the potential for lost post after an unsuccessful post is very high. This gets the thumbs down from me for this Android application. I decided to find another alternative way of posting blogs on the go and found way finally!

By using an image shrinking software to resize my photos, and using the Android phone's Gmail I could actually post my blogs. Pretty much how I did it with my Palm Centro. So looks like bye-bye sayonara to Blogger Droid app.

Pros about Blogger Droid:
- ability to shrink photos for posting
- review your previous posts
Cons about Blogger Droid:
- advertisement gets in the way
- biggest drawback is losing post when posting was unsuccessful, thus wasting your time and effort. This shouldn't have happened but it made me find a better way for mobile posting on the go.

The version that caused it was Blogger Droid version 1.59, perhaps version 1.60 may have solved the issue but this is a case of once bitten twice shy.

Xperia X10 Android 2.1 Update coming soon

My current Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro is running on Android phone version 1.6. Heard about the update/upgrade to Android phone version 2.1 will be released on week 38 or end of Q3. Somewhat earlier than the Q4 released mentioned.

Quick search found the SE blog about the upcoming release for Xperia X10 not just for the X10, but for the entire X10 series, the X10 mini pro and X10 mini.

Ran through the Sony Ericsson website and it seems I can upgrade the X10 Android phone software by ourselves instead of handing it over to the SE service center. If so that would save time but I wonder what are the caveats of doing my own software upgrade?

Maxis 100MB data plan

Just checked my recent Maxis bill and found out the internet data usage was rather exorbitant. Apparently Maxis has changed the billing block to RM0.10 per 10kb block rather than the 1¢ per 1kb. That means even this simple blog post of about 1kb will count as a 10kb block and Maxis will bill it as 10¢ rather than 1¢. No fair.
So now they have a new simple data plan which allows for 100MB of data per month for RM18/month. Doesn't sounds like much but should be adequate to cover the simple data usage.
I'm basically using my mobile for email and blogging. Not so much for surfing. The small screen of the PDA is just too teensy-weenie to do any serious browsing.
Also to note that this Maxis 100MB data plan is added in addition to any value plan that you have. But I believe I can get cost savings. So going to give this Maxis 100MB data plan a try!

[update 27/12/2012]
Wow! It's been so long since I signed up for data plan for my maxis mobile number. Initially I started with this 100MB plan at RM18/month. It was enough as a starter for my Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro figuring that I would switch it on when needed and swap over to WIFI when in office or at home.
Using this plan is also good if you have a cranky old Sony Ericsson phone which would connect to internet for no reason and there was no way to turn off the data access. Better to pay RM18 than saddled with a RM250 bill! Fortunately nowadays Maxis cap the data usage bill to RM250 max otherwise you may end up paying thousands!
Anyway since I started using data, I have changed mobile phone from Sony to HTC and now to my Nokia Lumia. My data usage was also increasing as I have decided to leave my data connection always on.
For just emails with occasional Whatsapp, Facebooking and Twittering, 500MB at RM38/month would be just enough. But my recent Nokia Lumia Windows Phone, I decided to use more apps as well as Internet sharing to another second spare mobile phone and thus more data was required. Thus I have now up it to 1GB data at RM48 per month. In addition, Maxis has decided not to charge for the extra data usage if one were to exceed the 1GB data plan, (this was not applicable to the lower data usage plan) so it was good to upgrade to this 1GB plan. If data usage were to be exceeded, Maxis would just throttle your speed under the FUP (fair use policy), so I figure this would be the best option for an always on data connection.
Of course the difference between the 100MB vs 1GB at RM18 vs RM48 is quite a lot, but it takes less work to ensure you don't exceed the data usage allotment and being charged on a per kilobyte basis.

HTC Wildfire hangs

The HTC Wildfire hangs! Waitaminute! Android PDA shouldn't be like that. In fact it is one of the stabler platform in comparison with Windows Mobile and Symbian.

My wife was in a hurry to silent the HTC Wildfire for her presentation to her customers. Don't know what she pressed which caused the HTC Wildfire to freeze up like that. She didn't noticed it and the phone flatlined from battery drain.

Now she have to recharge the battery and just to reset the HTC, I instructed her to take out the battery for ten seconds before reinserting it again.

Hmmm... Will have to look see what in the world that she did to make the HTC Wildfire to hang.