Another Piece of Shit

In which The Author is selling on Ebay once again

If you've only looked at the title of this entry, you're probably thinking 'Steve's being remarkably self-deprecating about his writing today'. But you'd be wrong. I'm not getting my paranoia in first – it's a reference to the latest skirmish in my ongoing War Against the Machines.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I've had an idea which was partly inspired by the lives of the Aberaman cyclists of the late Victorian era. However, before I attempt to put this idea to some friends of mine, I need to find out if it's even practicable. With that in mind, I've been trying to use my so-called 'smart'phone to see whether the inbuilt GPS locator is anything more than a 'cool' gimmick.

You see, this phone is absolutely jam-packed with 'cool' gimmicks – most of which wouldn't appeal to anyone over about six years old, unless they really haven't learned to read or have yet to grow out of playing Pokémon (like several friends of mine). I haven't used the majority of these features – or 'apps', as I believe they're called – since the day I took the bloody phone out of the box. This isn't because I don't want to use them.

It's because I simply don't need to use them.

Why the fuck would I need an app to tell me what the weather's like? If I want to know that, I can look out of the fucking window. And who the fuck can read a book on a screen which measures precisely 100 × 56 mm? There's also a Music Player and a Film and TV viewer. For films and TV, please refer back to the visible screen dimensions. For music, please give me something with slightly more advanced specs than 0.1 W output and a speaker so small that it makes the UK five pence piece look like the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank.

Even if I wanted to listen to music or watch films on a tiny piece of shit that makes my Netbook look like Goliath, I couldn't. For a start, there's fuck-all memory on the inbuilt chip. Most of that is taken up with the aforementioned pointless 'apps' like Music Player. They can't even be uninstalled because it's an Android phone, and Google apps are built in to the firmware. The best you can hope for is to disable them – which doesn't solve the problem – and/or move some apps to an SD card. Needless to say, the SD card doesn't come with the phone, so even the 'free' software ends up costing you money in the long run.

A couple of weeks ago I experimented with a couple of 'apps' which claimed to use the inbuilt GPS locator to track my movements. After playing with three different software packages, I gave them all up as a bad job. You see, in spite of what my friend Mark W. told me, it isn't enough to simply have the GPS enabled. You also have to be connected to the internet at the same time. Now I have a Pay As You Go phone. I accidentally enabled the mobile data one morning, soon after I bought the phone. I learned a harsh lesson when a fiver's worth of talktime vanished before I had chance to disable the fucking roaming. I've never enabled it since, and I almost certainly never will. I can't afford to be using mobile data for a few hours at a time, which is what I'd be talking about for this project.

So – Plan B: a smart wristband.

I know a fair number of people who use these devices when they're out running, cycling or whatever. I assumed that they just connected them to a PC and the software produced a map showing exactly where they've been, based on the GPS data stored in the wristband. So when I saw one of these things on sale in Cash Solutions in Aberdare, I decided that it might be worth a punt.

That was on Friday. I couldn't actually use it on Friday, because I had to charge it up first, of course. The little 'user guide' told me that I'd have to charge it for thirty minutes. However, there was nothing in the 'user guide' to indicate how you knew it was fully charging, or even whether it was switched on or off. There are little flashing lights on the side of the module, but they don't mean a thing in isolation.

(When I say 'user guide' I'm being extremely generous. It consists of a few little pictures and no text except for a note telling me to look at the website – in eighteen different languages.)

It turned out, having downloaded the full 'manual' from the website, that I needed to install three apps to my phone. I'd found two of them by trial and error on Friday afternoon. The third one, needless to say, was the key to the whole operation. I went up my own orifice on Saturday afternoon, trying to work out how to get the fucking thing to track my progress from Thereisnospoon to the Cambrian, and thence to the Coliseum. It turned out that not only does it have to be permanently tethered to my phone using Bluetooth, everyone's favourite fucked-up data exchange standard. It also has to be permanently connected to the internet.

As I'm on Pay As You Go, that really isn't an option. When only about a third of the pubs and a quarter of the public buildings in Wales have any sort of free wifi, I'll be lucky to mark the start and finish of my walk, never mind the bits in between.

I tried again on Sunday, and gave up again when it couldn't even tell me I'd walked from Thereisnospoon to the Glosters. I was rapidly running out of patience (and battery life).

This morning I decided to look at the Sony UK website. That was what I typed into Google, anyway. It appears to have taken me to Sony Europe, because the first thing I had to do was choose my location. Well, if their site is so badly designed that it can't even pin down the fucking country I'm in, the GPS in their fucking gadgets can't be up to much, can it?

I eventually found my way to the support site, and left them the following message:

Well done, Sony.

Your SWR10 Smartband is undoubtedly the most pointless piece of crap I've come across since my 'smart'phone. I wanted something that I could take out for a walk, and then use it to chart my route via Google Maps. Having experimented with a couple of apps, they didn't come up to the mark. Where I live we're lucky to have a 1G signal a lot of the time, never mind 4G. I'm on Pay As You Go, so I really can't afford to spend a few hours connected to the mobile network – even if it was available in some of the places I've got in mind. When I came across your SWR10, I looked at the packaging, saw the simulated phone displays of maps, and decided that it might be just what I was looking for. I was wrong. Completely wrong.

For a start, your 'user guide' was of absolutely no use. The ancient Egyptians used pictures to communicate with each other. In the intervening four thousand years most of us have progressed to things called 'words'. I once did a psychology module on 'Product Usability' – maybe your people could sit in next time. I hadn't realised before purchasing this gadget that I'd also need to download THREE – count 'em – apps to my phone. I located LifeLog and the SWR10 app, but not Smart Connect. I spent the next two days, on and off, trying to set the damn thing up. I downloaded a 19-page 'instruction manual' the following day. It was a little more help – but not a lot. You still need to be connected to the internet, and your Bluetooth needs to be permanently on as well. I'd be charging my phone every five minutes even if I could afford to be permanently online. Last night I gave up entirely.

As for Lifelog – if I wanted something to tell me how long I'd spent reading a book, I'd use my clock. Nice idea, very badly executed.

Utterly pointless. It's now on sale on Ebay.

That last bit's true, incidentally. I've just listed it. In the meantime, if anyone nearer home would care to take it off my hands, you can have it for a tenner. After reading such a masterly sales pitch, it's unlikely that any of you would want it, but if you do, please leave a comment. I really don't have the fucking patience to fuck around with it any longer. I'm going to buy a little map measurer and do it the old way instead.