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I'm thinking hard about finally taking the plunge into smartphones (and specifically a phablet) come next year when I get my tax return back.

 

Definitely looking at the Sprint unlimited plan, because T-Mobile has nothing anywhere near me, and I know that Sprint covers 3G and some 4G in my area, and the unlimited plan from them is cheaper than any capped plan from Verizon or AT&T (HOLY FUCK are AT&T plans fucking expensive compared to just about anyone else) which would eliminate the Xperia Z Ultra, so I'm mostly down to deciding between the Galaxy Note, the HTC One, or the not yet here in the States Galaxy Mega. 

The Mega will be released this week:

 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2423262,00.asp

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I'm thinking hard about finally taking the plunge into smartphones (and specifically a phablet) come next year when I get my tax return back.

 

Definitely looking at the Sprint unlimited plan, because T-Mobile has nothing anywhere near me, and I know that Sprint covers 3G and some 4G in my area, and the unlimited plan from them is cheaper than any capped plan from Verizon or AT&T (HOLY FUCK are AT&T plans fucking expensive compared to just about anyone else) which would eliminate the Xperia Z Ultra, so I'm mostly down to deciding between the Galaxy Note, the HTC One, or the not yet here in the States Galaxy Mega. 

The Mega will be released this week:

 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2423262,00.asp

 

Only the AT & T model though.  Sprint doesn't have a date yet.

 

At any rate, I've gotten pretty sold on the LG Optimus G as a phone that I can afford (free with contract from sprint) now, and seems to have most of what I want (I wish it were expandable, but 32 gigs isn't bad) without having to wait for income tax returns.  And by the time my contract is up/I'm upgrade eligible, I will be closing in on having my car paid off, which will put me in a better position to be a little pickier.

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Yeah, I resisted smartphones for a long time.  Now I'm a crackhead when it comes to mine.

 

In other news, I rooted my Nook HD+, putting CM10.2 on there and have been running stock Android for a couple weeks.  Generally very pleased with it other than Chrome being wonky.  When using Chrome on message boards, it would hide/unhide the keyboard all on its own.  Made responding to posts a bit of a challenge :)  I downloaded Firefox instead and that took care of the problem.  Had to download a plugin to get embedded Youtube videos to work again (they work natively in Chrome) but that took no time.  Need to maybe find a sideload for Adblock Plus.

 

Impressions of the Nook in general?  I love it.  It's fast, it's very light, and the screen?  The screen is fantastic.  High-def content looks amazing and photos on Facebook are spectacular.  For the price I paid - basically free, LOL - it's worth every penny!  Seriously though, even if I'd paid the $150 out of pocket, I'd still say it was worth it.

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Four days of having a smart phone, and already I wonder how I lived without it.

 

I can definitely identify with that.  I think I told the story on the old board of how I went into Verizon looking for a flip phone, believing that they'd never make a smartphone big enough for my bad vision, and ended up as maybe the sole satisfied owner of the LG Intuition, but that thing has legit changed my life in several ways and replaced my iPad for about half the things I used it for, as well as getting me to discard my iPod entirely.

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Got my Chromecast today from BestBuy.com. For effectively $11 + tax with the Netflix coupon, it's pretty awesome if just for flinging YouTube videos from a phone/tablet to the TV. Netflix experience is pretty nice, too. Don't have any Android devices so I couldn't try Google Play, though. Screen sharing is about what you'd expect:

I know other devices support the YouTube features, which are the best part, but again, it's $11. With the Roku LT being $50 retail and $40 at Amazon, Chromecast without 3 free months of Netflix feels a overpriced for the feature set, though.

Thankfully didn't need to use the wall wart because my TV has a USB port that I'm pretty sure is there specifically to power low-power devices like that and the Ceton Echo (no photo/video viewing features built in to the TV).

Haven't tried it with an MHL capable receiver yet. Does anyone know if it supports that or do you need USB power no matter what? No MHL would be oddly counterintuitive unless it's weirdly expensive to implement.

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Thankfully didn't need to use the wall wart because my TV has a USB port that I'm pretty sure is there specifically to power low-power devices like that and the Ceton Echo (no photo/video viewing features built in to the TV).

 

As far as I understand, for a lot of TVs, that USB port is there mainly to help technicians service the TV, if necessary.

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