New HTC U11 to replace my Note 4

I have been running the Note 4 that a previous company bought for me. Previous to that I had a Note 2. While I really like the Note series I was ready to be done with Samsung and the slow to never Android OS version updates. Newer Samsung phones are not cheap either and I buy my phones outright, not on a payment plan with the carrier. Personal choice.

I researched what was out there and made some guesses about what was coming up. The HTC U11 seemed to hit the sweet spot for me. So far I have been very happy with the purchase.

Pros of the U11

• Much faster. Pretty obvious that is is a newer device + processor so it should be
• Nice to not have to look at USB cable every time you plug it in - no upside down mode
• Responsive - I am not seeing lag when starting apps etc.
• Solid sound. Note 4 was tinny at best and easy to block speaker when holding it normally
• Rounded - easier on all parts of the hand to hold this device
• Fast charging
• Solid battery life even with lots of screen usage
• Can finally do slo-mo videos 
• Solid camera
• Comes with noise cancelling ear buds - sound good and do block the noise
• I have Nougat
• Squeeze to access camera. I think this is a handy usable gimmick.

Cons of the U11

• Lost my Stylus - did not use it a ton but when I did it was very helpful
• Screen is not as vibrant with its colors - everything is crisp though
• Non-removable battery. I did replace the battery on the Note 4 as it aged
• No headphone jack but I rarely use headphones and it did come with a dongle to use with older headphones / earbuds.
• No IR blaster. Another thing I used from time to time but did not rely upon.

The pros greatly outweigh the cons. This was a great upgrade and I am super happy with my purchase. Ordered off Amazon along with a few extra USB-C cables. We had some in the house for my wife's Axon 7 but not enough as I needed one in car, one at work, one for laptop and one for computer room where I use phone for debugging.

Surprised I had to install the HTC software on the Mac to be able to debug over USB. Mac usually does not care about drivers. Once configured it worked great and beats the heck out of using Android file transfer crap when I do want to get photos off the phone. APKs push so much faster to the device as well. Probably a mix of USB-C and faster device.

I don't have any complaints about the phone. It has taken everything I have tossed at it. 

I did switch from Llama to Automagic. Llama was free and worked for years but it has not been updated in years and it was showing some issues with Nougat. Since Automagic is not free I tried the 10 day trial version off their website. After a day I paid for the full version. It has worked like a champ. I had to configure more to get my standard flows to work but it is more powerful. Wife was ready for a change as well so she is running Automagic now too. 

My setup is pretty basic:

Enter house -> enable WiFi and connect to it

Leave house -> disable WiFi, set phone to normal sound

Enter work -> enable WiFi, connect, set phone to vibrate

Leave work -> disable WiFi, set phone to normal sound

10:30 PM -> set phone to vibrate only mode

6:30 AM -> set phone to normal sound

As for other phones I considered:

Waiting on Pixel 2. I knew it would get near instant Android updates but the current series was hard to find in stock, had crappy speakers like the Note 4 and probably would cost a couple hundred more than the U11. Plus my birthday / father's day was great time to do a phone upgrade. The wait was going to be for longer that I was willing to hold out.

OnePlus 5. I am just iffy on their long term support. After it came out I was happy I skipped this one. I like the quad res screen over 1080 especially for Google Cardboard.

Newer LG phones. Seems the boot loop issue and other quality issues around LG continue to haunt them. Nothing on the phones really jumped out at me.

Upgrade Vista to Win7 takes 5 hours - why?

With various upgrades and new hardware in the house only one machine was left running Vista, my wife's Gateway laptop. It has a 1920x1200 screen that she runs at a different DPI to read it easier. Once you do that Chrome screws up and you can't use the upper right button to minimize, maximize or close it. Vista was also having some other issues and since it was the only copy running in the house I decided it was time for it to go.

I had a buddy with exact same hardware do the upgrade and it went smoothly for him. I had a Win7 Ultimate DVD from a MS one day conference so there was no cash outlay. Just to be safe I used my Win7 Ultimate 64bit DVD hoping the key from MS would work. The MS conference DVD just listed 32bit but this was running 64bit Vista and I sure as heck did not want to downgrade that.

Put in the DVD and started the upgrade process around 2 PM. It got down around 7 PM. Really? Why the heck did an upgrade take that long? I really have no idea. It had 6 steps to the process and various steps would get stuck at 20% or some other percentage for over 30 minutes. I just left it alone checking on it every so often and finally the percentage would move. I thought that would only happen during one of the steps but it happened over and over. Plenty of space on the HD and this is not a slow machine but it really drug out the process.

Once that was all done I had to grab some patches off the web and reinstall the video driver with a couple of reboots to make sure it was all happy. Running like a champ and she likes the enhancements offered by Win7. Chrome works, you can right click on task bar items such as Word to see and open recent files, task bar is cleaner, easy to move items between monitors, shake to minimize all others, etc. Plus it is much easier for me to do phone support if every computer in house on same OS. Only the file / print server is on XP. I feel no real need to upgrade that box right away although I do feel the printer / fax / scanner support under XP for the Canon printer we have is a big buggy.

If I would have known it was going to take that long I would have started it earlier in the day. I was worried the upgrade would screw up so I have been putting this off. With a friend pulling it off on same hardware I felt better but I was also using a MS key from a slightly different OS, 32 vs. 64 bit, but all accounts on web said this would work. I did not want to lose any of her existing programs - Quicken, MS Office 2010 and others as she uses it on a daily basis. Anytime you upgrade someone else you want it to go perfect otherwise you hear about it for days. Doing your own hardware is not so bad, you can put up with a lot, but dealing with others is a bear.

Feels good to have this off the books. Nice way to end the weekend and she is happy. I also took some weekend time to rip more of my CD collection to give me some variety of tunes at work. I listen to a lot of older music (80s, 90s) and I have it all on legal CDs that just sit in a cabinet. Good to be able to hear the old hair metal at work. Listening to "The Dark Saga" from Iced Earth right now. My son wanted to try some other songs out too and along the line we lost some stuff I ripped a number of years ago. He wanted Adam Ant back in his play list. I will have to listen to that today too. Good stuff.