The quickest way to charge a Nokia Lumia 800

I can’t say I’ve ever considered the differences between charging my Nokia Lumia 800 via USB and via the AC adaptor. If I had thought about, I would probably have assumed they charge at just the same rate. But this morning when I was thinking about going on a bike ride, I realised my phone was out of juice, so wanted to charge it ASAP. A little research showed using the AC adaptor would be much quicker than plugging into USB.

But in case you don’t believe me (And to be honest not believing random people on the internet is probably a good thing), you can check it out for yourself. From the phone dialler, type ##643# and the diagnostics tool will be installed. Run this app and look at the battery status section whilst charging. I found the AC adaptor was providing about twice as much power as the USB connection.

Endomondo discovers how to get my money

When I logged into Endomondo the other day I discovered that in the process of redesigning their website, they had also decided to hide some of the useful stats from us users who weren’t paying them any money.

I could have started shouting and screaming at this point, since they’d had the temerity to take away my free toys. But frankly $20 a year for a very useful service is a price worth paying if it helps them to keep the lights on.

Of course this approach only works for sites that offer a valuable service, it probably wouldn’t work for quite a few sites (I’m looking at you Facebook!)

Bike It example Windows Phone app source code

I started to write my own biking app for Windows Phone then found an app that was much better than I could hope to achieve. So here is the source code for my app, which might be useful if you want to do something similar, or just want to see an example Windows Phone app. Be warned, the code is not particularly pretty.

Endomondo and the app that will never be

I’ve written before about the two bike apps I’ve found for my Windows Phone, MyBikeMap and MapMyRide. I was so convinced that they were the only two options available that I started to write my own bike app. I got quite far with it, then I noticed a new app, Cyclocomp. I downloaded it and was quite impressed but decided it had a fatal flaw, it lets the phone go to sleep, the same problem that MapMyRide had. Wondering if I’m doing something wrong or am using these apps in a way nobody else is I had a look around for a review of it. That led me on to another app Endomondo. So I thought I’d give it a go and was immediately impressed.

The user interface is simple and elegant, the displayed stats can be configured to whatever you prefer, the map takes up the whole screen and you can even receive pep talks (and you can turn them off!). And even better, the data gets uploaded to the Endomondo website where you can view the map and see lots of geeky stats about your rides. And you can even enter challenges with other users, challenges that I am bound to lose since there’s clearly some very fit, active people on there. My only complaint is the map occasionally seems to get confused and stops showing the trail of where you’ve come from. But for free, it’s pretty much perfect.

And it rather puts my feeble effort to shame, so I guess my bike app won’t be seeing the light of day…

Smart phone + app + bike mounting > bike computer

I recently took possession of a new Nokia Lumia 800, thanks to work, and immediately thought it would make a great replacement for my Veloset GPS 600 bike computer. Hearing Windows Phone didn’t have many apps, I thought I’d have to write my own biking app, but it turns out there are already a couple available, both free.

The first is MapMyRide. This initially seemed pretty good, but it has one fatal flaw, it lets the phone go to sleep. If you want to look at the map as you ride it is pretty tricky. You really don’t want to be fiddling with your phone when you’re riding.

Next up is MyBikeMap, which has one big advantage in that it doesn’t let the phone sleep, so I can look at my map all the time during my ride. It’s also well designed, with a simple user interface and showing just the pertinent information on the screen displayed when riding. It’s not perfect, my main complaint is the lack of support for miles, but it’s hard to complain too much when it’s free and it does most of what I want.

The final piece of the puzzle is something to attach the phone to my bike. I went for this mounting, primarily because it came up first on a Google search. The phone fits it perfectly and I was pleased to realise I could leave the zip open slightly to still have access to the buttons and I was able to use the touch screen through the plastic cover. But it does have a somewhat major problem as I found out today. Although the coupling between cover and bracket on the bike is perfectly adequate when riding on a road, if it gets a jolt then the cover (and the phone) can go flying. And you might not even notice until you look down some time later.

The design of the mounting is kind of weird, the cover is attached to the bracket not once but twice. One of these couplings is pretty secure, but the other isn’t. So the solution I’ve come up with is to glue the weaker coupling and I’m hoping this solves the problem. But you may want to consider this issue before purchasing this mounting.

But other than the teething problems, I’m pretty happy with this set up. It’s great to have a map in front of me as I ride, since it gives me much more opportunity to try heading off down a road or track that I don’t know without worrying about getting completely lost. And it makes me think the market for high end bike computers may not last much longer. Why spend £200 on one of them when a smart phone can do the same job?