Pinoy Reviews

So, I was looking for a back-up internet provider because lately, Bayantel has been down in our area. Enter the whole page ad by Wi-Tribe in the local papers. 2Mbps for 998? That's the cheapest and fastest connection at that price point, plus the fact that there's no lock-in period until December 2, what have you got to lose, right?

Fortunately for you, I got to try out their service so that you don't have to waste your precious time and money.

So, what is Wi-Tribe's service and what is this "4G" they're talking about? Well, basically, it's WiMax, I don't know what the heck is WiMax but its not like Smart or Globe Broadband wherein you have a dongle with simcard although Wi-Tribe does have a USB dongle which means you can take it with you wherever you go but it doesn't have a simcard so you can't swap out their sim and put it in a much better, nicer looking dongle.

Now that's out of the way, let me talk about their actual service. When their sales representative got to our house to do their demo, they gave me a black Motorola modem which was pre-installed with their service but the default speed you got was around 512mbps until your account got activated. My account got activated within 24 hours and I readily went to speedtest.net to check out their claim of 2Mbps speed. I was surprised that it got past the 2Mbps mark. Nice! Internet browsing was a breeze. I was actually pretty impressed...but that lasted only 24 hours.

The next day, I was prepared to do some downloading. I wanted to watch a 2 minute HD trailer of Hunger Games on YouTube, I was actually hoping that I could watch it without any buffers because 1) it's a 2 minute video 2) I'm supposed to have a 2Mbps speed. 15 minutes passed, I wasn't even at half finished with the trailer!

How about bittorrent? A lot of Filipinos are looking at Wi-Tribe with their 2Mbps speed for torrenting, well, it's a no go. Heck, a torrent with 2000 seeders and 5000 leechers and I couldn't get even get past the 1kbps download speed!!!!! And I'm supposed to be a new customer! Isn't there supposed to be a honeymoon stage of some sort?

So I called up their hotline, which by the way you should be prepared to wait for 15-30 minutes before you get a hold of an actual customer service representative. The troubleshooting includes you disconnecting from your actual wifi router, connecting it directly to your PC, clearing some cache, and then going to Wi-Tribe's website which of course tells you that your speed is beyond 2mbps mark whilst other bandwidth test sites says your bandwidth is just 256-768kbps.

In the end, I realized that as a back-up internet, I shouldn't have applied for the 998 plan but should have stuck with the 598 plan. Now in order to downgrade my plan, I have to pay 2,000 downgrade fee. Whether I should bite it or just turn in my modem to their nearest Wi-Tribe office and apply for a new plan I have yet to think about.  I'll wait another week and see if I can actually get a honeymoon period from them but if you still plan to try their service, stick with the plan 598, it would be a lesser disappointment.

Citibank has recently collaborated with Cebu Pacific to bring us the Juan card or Cebu Pacific Visa Credit Card. In order to entice customers, Citibank is saying they'll be giving away one free flight to those who get approved by October 11. I'm sure many will be enticed by this promo including my jetsetter officemates but just a word of warning: You'll have to keep your card for 18 months once approved. That means you'll have to pay the annual fee which is 2,800 according to Citibank's website so in reality, you'll actually be paying for your fare, albeit, 18 months after in the form of their annual fee.

So what happens if you want out? They'll most likely charge you for the ticket fare and knowing Citibank, it will be more than 2,800. So you're better off just waiting for Cebu Pacific's promos.

Of course the card does have perks, 2 hours lead time on Cebu Pacific's promos, notwithstanding that travel agents probably booked their promo fares before they even announce it. And of course you'll earn 1 point for every peso charged to your credit card which is equivalent to .01 cent when you convert it to a voucher which you can use to pay off your ticket fare when booking with CebuPacific.

The first group buy website that I've encountered is cashcashpinoy.com. I've come to know the site from one of the forums I frequent and it was because of the Sofitel buffet coupon they were offering. Me and my husband are suckers for buffets. Anyways, I wasn't able to buy their first offer for a 50% discount on Sofitel's buffet but I visit the website now and then to see what they were offering. No, I didn't subscribe to their daily emails.

Buyanihan.com I've heard through my email. I was surprised one day to receive an email from them. So I guess their marketing strategy is to spam email accounts that they got from God knows where coz I know that I didn't subscribe to their website. Heck, I didn't even know about them till they sent me an email. Anyways, I didn't unsubscribe or anything, I was curious, then I read about them in the papers so they seemed legit even though they spam so I let them email me with their offers. So far, all Buyanihan is offering is mostly discount from Spas and restaurants. I'm not a Spa person and most of the restaurant offers are far away from my area so I've yet to purchase my first group buy coupon from them.

Cashcashpinoy on the other hand offers different kinds of coupons. I once saw from their past offers that they offered a P1,000 peso coupon for only 500 to be used at Crumpler! Damn! I was so annoyed that I missed that offer. I would have bought a new bag for my Macbook. In my frustration, I gave in and subscribed to their daily emails. Jackpot! A few days back, got an email saying they have a P1,000 coupon for only P500 at Belkin! Yes! Just my cup of tea. I quickly purchased it and paid using my credit card. The process is quick and easy. Of course, I have my reservations about giving away my credit card details to a Philippine payment company but I quickly shrugged it off since I know I'm protected by the credit card law against fraudulent use of my credit card especially in online transactions. The credit card companies can't say that you have to report it first since how the heck would you know if someone stole your credit card details online?

Anyways, going back to my purchase at Cashcashpinoy, the coupon quickly showed up in my account and all I had to do was print it. Went to Belkin SM North Edsa and purchased my desired item. Of course, using the coupon at Belkin was another story. It seems the staff didn't get a masterlist or something of the coupons they sold so instead of a quick purchase, I had to wait 30 minutes for the staff to verify my coupon.

But all's good. I'm happy and eagerly awaiting the next coupon any of these Group buy websites have to offer. Buyanihan.com still has to offer something good that would suit my taste other than spa services and restaurant coupons but if you like to eat out, I'm sure buyanihan.com has something good for you. As for cashcashpinoy.com, I'm crossing my fingers that they have a PowerMac coupon next.

Okay, so we all know that the iPhone 4 is not available in the Philippines yet but of course there are already iPhone 4 owners here. If you're an early adopter, you might want to avail of Apple's free case program but the problem? You won't be able to see and download the iPhone 4 case program app using your Philippine iTunes account nor will you be able to ship it here.

If you have relatives in countries where the iPhone 4 is already available (US, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc) you can borrow their iTunes account so you can send your free case to them and they in turn can send it to you. If none of them have an iTunes account, you can create one and register with their address using this guide: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2534, you can also download the iPhone 4 case program while you're at it. Once done, you can now order your free case.

Oh, BTW, I ran into a bit of trouble while logging in on the iPhone 4 Case program app. It tells me: Your Apple ID or password is entered incorrectly. I was getting frustrated until I decided to give it a rest and try again in a few hours. Miraculously, I was able to log in and order my case and had it delivered to my sister in the UK.

Thanks to mysterio at Philmug.ph for suggesting how to create the iTunes account.

The Samsung Galaxy 5 i5500, Samsung's latest and cheapest Android mobile phone is now available in the Philippines. At first, I thought the Samsung Galaxy Spica would be the cheapest Android handset we can get but Samsung surprised as yet again with the Samsung Galaxy 5.

The Samsung Galaxy 5 looks a lot like Samsung's Corby line and at a price point of around Php11,750-12,000, with Android 2.1, it's definitely enticing. Our friends over at Cellphone-Reviews has the Samsung i5500 Galaxy 5 Review. Interestingly, it's going by the name of Samsung Europa and is exclusive to CarphoneWarehouse in the US.

Here in the Philippines, the Samsung Galaxy 5 is available at most Samsung resellers.

So by now you probably know that the iPhone 4 has arrived and will be available on June 24th in four countries: US, France, Germany, and UK. The second wave of countries wherein the iPhone 4 will hit is around July and sorry, no Philippines in the list. According to some blogs, 18 countries will get the iPhone 4 in July and these are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Come August, 24 countries will get the iPhone 4 and an additional 44 countries will get the latest mobile phone by September.

So by the looks of it, the iPhone 4 will be available in the Philippines around August or September. Quite a long wait but still enough time to start reserving your units at Globe. Last time the 3GS was released here, there were availability issues so make sure you're one of the first to reserve their units. And you better start reserving coz just by looking at the iPhone 4 features, this is one heck of a mobile phone that everybody would want.

I just came from reviewing the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and had some quality time with the HTC Legend. So, does an aluminum unibody make all the difference or will the Xperia X10's 1 GHz processor leave the HTC Legend in the dust?

Design

The HTC Legend's aluminum unibody is gorgeous. It's sleek and sexy but I wish that HTC would make it look less like the Hero. The metal body should feel slippery but its not, the only problem is that you'll be extra careful when handling the Legend because you'll feel like the metal body could be easily scratched. There's minimal hardware buttons on the Legend. On top is the power button, on the left side is the volume rocker, there's no camera button or lock button on the Legend. The optical trackpad on front is useful especially when you're trying to go back to mistyped words when typing sms. The home button, back button, search and menu button is below the screen, initially, I thought it it was touch sensitive but its actually hardware buttons. It looks flat but actually has a very nice tactile feel.

Features

Now I've handled a lot of Android mobile phones before, Nexus One, Galaxy Spica, Motorola Milestone, and recently the X10 but this is the first time that I've handled an Android phone with Sense UI. I actually like it. HTC Sense gives you 7 homescreens to work with which you can fill up with widgets and shortcuts. If you don't want to swipe through all seven homescreens, you can always use the pinch to zoom feature on the homescreen to get a one screen view of all of your homescreens.

The screen responsiveness is REALLY great, comparable with the iPhone. Kinetic scrolling is great, no hiccups whatsoever. Best of all, the glass screen is so smooth your fingers glide effortlessly on the screen, like a hot knife slicing through butter. So far, I haven't experienced any lags or unresponsiveness on the Legend, unlike on the X10. While timescape and mediascape is an eye candy on the X10, the Legend makes up for that through friendstream and HTC's own media player. I don't really use Friendstream much as its a data hog and my Smart internet connection is getting so slow these days. Audio quality through the speakers is good, it's loud and there's not so much background noise.

Best thing I love about the HTC Legend? The web browser. It renders web pages fast, scrolling is smooth and best of all, it has Flash. I was able to load Farmville but couldn't really play with it. Maybe there's some issues that HTC needs to fix with the Flash. Videos on YouTube plays through the YouTube player but other sites that uses Flash videos I was able to play but again, I don't know whether it's issues with Flash or my slow internet connection but Flash videos are a bit slow and blocky.


The 5 megapixel camera is REALLY awesome...at least, compared with my previous HTC phones such as the HTC Diamond 2. Images are clear and the camera is at least useful in low light conditions. The optical trackpad acts like the shutter button and it automatically focuses on your subject. Here are sample shots taken from the HTC Legend.



Compared with the Xperia X10

I really didn't notice that much difference with the X10 and the Legend in terms of responsiveness. In fact, it may be due to the Timescape but the Legend's Sense UI feels much more snappy. With the X10, I've encountered some lags when opening applications but that's non-existent with the Legend. But I like the X10's design more. The black plastic and sharp edges makes the X10 just a tad more sophisticated.

Conclusion

The HTC Legend is definitely one of the best smartphones in the market today. This previous Windows Mobile fan has turned a new leaf and gone the Android way. I do hope that we see more Android handsets in the market but then again, I doubt that any competitor would be able to match the Legend, except maybe the HTC Desire.