Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Many more micro satellites on the way (and mobile phone talk)

Foreign Correspondent moved away from its normal political/social emphasis last night to look at the growing industry of micro satellites, and it was pretty fascinating.

I liked the way the guy from Planet explained how the origin of the idea was just to put mobile phone technology into space:  he emphasised the technological marvel that the commonplace mobile phone is these days, just as I like to do.

I am itching to buy a new mobile phone at the moment, and I am contemplated being unfaithful to Samsung.   (I may need to visit the confessional.)   The Moto G5 Plus seems to have everything I want in a mobile phone - except, I admit, the wonders of a beautiful Samsung AMOLED screen.

To get all that I want, ideally, I would buy a $650 Samsung A5.   But for $250 less, the Moto one has NFC - needed for using your phone to make paywave payment (an odd exception from Samsung J5 and J7, which cost the same or more as the G5 Plus), and a gyro sensor (which I understand is important if you want to use it to live in a VR world - and also not in the equivalent priced Samsung models.)   But the A5 does have a gorgeous looking screen, and is quite waterproof.     (Note that I have ever dropped a phone in the toilet - yet.)

Bizarrely, I have noticed that the cheap Samsung J range has this weird thing where some of the cheaper models have an AMOLED screen, and even my two year old cheapo J1 has NFC;  but the top end of the J range (J5 and J7) don't have either of these.  Hence Samsung are still making things rather confusing with the features in their model range.

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