Buying from telco and still wondering whether it's a genuine handset. Only in Malaysia.


We are Malaysia Zimbabwe

Since when is aluminium a premium material? O_o
It's not like it's made from HM1K carbon or Inconel 713

Need some clarification;

You guys, when you say 4G/LTE, do you actually get '4G' or 'LTE' showing on the top status bar and Settings > Cellular? I have no idea how Malaysian telcos classify things. In Singapore (where I live/work) 4G and LTE are the same. Some telcos display '4G' and some display 'LTE', but both are the same performance.

How does it work here? Is it something like the U.S where you get both 4G and LTE on the same network (U.S 4G is actually 3.5G performance, while their LTE is true 4G ... at least for AT&T) or is it just different wording depending on the telco/carrier, like in S'pore?

Just curious because I have a Celcom Xpax prepaid for when I come back to J.B to visit my mum on weekends, and it shows '4G' in the statusbar. Needed to call to activate that, btw. Tried a couple of times and the operator buat-bodoh saying already activate but my area no coverage, so the third time I went to the main Celcom store in J.B town center and called the operator from my phone, telling them I was in the middle of a 4G area and was still getting 3G only. It worked. They opened some "report" (probably bullsh*t) and I got 4G within a couple of hours.

This post has been edited by G-17: Mar 16 2015, 10:53 PM

^ Is that true? I thought it depended on the carrier firmware - the updates that you get once in a while when you go to Settings > General > About.

My iPhone 6 is an Australian set. Says 4G both on my Singapore carrier and Celcom. My gf is on the same carrier as me and her iPhone 5s (Singapore set) also says 4G. Another collegue's iPhone 6 (also Singapore set) says LTE, but he's using a different telco from my gf and me.

This post has been edited by G-17: Mar 16 2015, 11:49 PM

Yup, definitely different. I still use my Nexus 5 sometimes, and it's still a decent phone (aside from the battery which is a bit crap now after a year+ of heavy use). Samsung on the other hand, let's just say I wouldn't use TouchPiss even if you held a gun to my head.

This post has been edited by G-17: Mar 20 2015, 02:36 PM

Make sure to have extra saved for Parallels or VMware Fusion

I hope they drop the 16gb and skip the 32gb and just start with 64gb at the current 16gb price.

No, he actually makes sense. There are lots of people who just buy the latest iPhone or Galaxy for the sake of having it. They still use it as a dumb-phone in many respects - just calling, messaging, and maybe the occasional facebook or whatever. They just want the "prestige" that comes with it (because they can't afford a Porsche). My neighbour has a 6Plus, and she doesn't have any third-party app except for Line (which her daughter installed for her). She practically does nothing outside calling and messaging. When I asked her why she got such an expensive phone for such simple tasks, she said "because it's an iPhone". I'm guessing she got it in gold because she wanted it to match her tacky nightclub mama-san outfits as well. Doesn't make sense to people like us, but it's the way of the world, and companies like Apple and Samsung know this as well.

This post has been edited by G-17: May 4 2015, 12:54 AM

I can tell you that Celcom's coverage map is bullsh*t anywhere outside the Klang Valley. Places that they claim to be under "strong" coverage sometimes don't get jack-squat, and some ulu village that even Waze cannot find can get full bar 4G. My mum's house in J.B, for example, considered not covered, but I can get a stable 4G connection. The commercial/shopping district that's listed as 4G close by often can't even maintain a stable 3G connection and falls back to E. Total bullsh*t!!

It's the country, not the phone.

I live in Singapore and get 4G/LTE almost everywhere, no problem. Only when I go back to J.B to visit my mum on weekends and swap to a Celcom sim does it start hunting and switching between 3G and 4G constantly. At mum's house, no issues, constant 4G, but in the city centre and other high density areas that are supposed to be within 4G coverage, it hunts all the time.

I think it's a case of Celcom just not upgrading infrastructure to keep up with the number of users.

TL;DR = Normal day in Bolehland

Sony probably have a bigger team of people behind the iPhone's sensor than their own. The reason? Profit! Sony make more from being an iPhone camera sensor OEM than their entire smartphone division. They have the capability (just look at Sony DSLRs from the last couple of years), just not willing to commit the resources (Sony is still in the red, financially speaking) to their own line. Probably more bankers making the dicisions than engineers.


Worth noting that 32bit processors cannot use more than 3GB of memory anyway (well, it's possible with the Linux PAE kernel, but I don't think Android supports that), and currently only a few flagships are 64bit ready. I don't really follow Android outside the Nexus line (Nexus 6 is still 32 bit), so I'm not sure on the models names though. That Zenfone2 and Samsung's new S6/Edge are 64bit, I believe.

This post has been edited by G-17: May 12 2015, 08:17 PM

I did a quick Google search for "iPhone 6 Plus one hand keyboard" and got a few hits for third-party keyboards. Never tried them personally though. No idea if they're any good. Try reading the reviews before deciding.

http://fleksy.com/ios8/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/handy-one-h...d951349222?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/one-handed-...d922361972?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/one-handed-...d922361972?mt=8

At those prices, one might as well pay the premium for a 128GB iPhone instead.
Seriously, $289 for a 16GB flash drive? That's like audiophile snake-oil cable levels of crazy!!

^ Who does the refurbishing? Apple, or some local YeoHiapSeng company?

No need. Letting the battery drain to zero and fully charging is only for the software battery calibration (the consistency in which the OS reports battery consumption). It doesn't affect the the actual life of the battery. In fact, it's actually recommended you charge the battery as often as possible. For example, if you average about 40% use per day - meaning you reach home with 60% charge - just charge it anyway. Don't wait for to days for it to go down to 20% before charging.



Most of the cases where people complain about battery drain after a new iOS update - almost 90% of the time it's some app they run that hasn't been updated for the new iOS version. Most notorious ones are WhatsApp, Facebook and Skype. If that's not the case then it's probably some setting or daemon that got messed up and is constant logging or crashing and restarting automatically. Performing a reset should solve that. Another possible fix would be to delete messaging apps (especially WhatsApp, which is known to suck battery faster thas Malaysian politicians suck money), then reboot the phone before reinstalling them again, though you might lose some saved conversations/chats in the process unless you've backed them up. Fwiw, I've not had any battery life issues with any version of iOS 8 so far.



First, try to reset your phone (Settings > General > Reset). If that doesn't work, erase all content and settings and restore your data (make a backup first with iCloud or iTunes). If that doesn't fix the issue, then try to claim warranty.


Same here. I do have Mercury as a backup browser for surfing on Cellular data, to block ads. When on Wifi, I use Safari with WeBlock for ad/tracker-blocking. Chrome is sh*t for me, since you can't swipe to go back (at least that was the case last time I tried it) and the tabs are all the way on top. I've also heard that Chrome is less battery efficient than Safari on iOS, though I never tested that claim out in person. In general, I don't really like any Google apps on iOS because they use their own Material Design gesture guidelines instead of the iOS guidelines, which kinda sucks in terms of UX consistency.. I think the only Google app currently on my iPhone is Translate.

This post has been edited by G-17: May 24 2015, 10:32 PM

You forget that this is Asia, man.


All browsers in iOS are mandated to use Apple's rendering engine, even Chrome.. Whatever gains you see will be from UI optimizations only, which are miniscule, and afaik Safari's UI is actually more streamlined than Chrome's.

You could try Mercury Browser Pro. It's got an internal brightness adjustment that dims the screen further than even your phone's lowest brightness setting (great for browsing at night while in bed), though I'm not certain if it's actually dimming the LCD brightness or just putting a translucent grey "layer" on top of itself. I'm not a fan of the way it shows tabs though.

Frankly, looking at iOS battery usage chart is not a good way to measure power consumption. If you browse a lot, your browser will be at the top of the chart regardless. There are also so many other variables to consider, like the type of webpages you view - visiting to a heavy site like theverge.com ten times a day would definitely consume more juice than visiting goosh.org twenty times a day, for example, and all this even before you go to some of those websites that have crazy javascript/html5 animations and whatnot.

A better way to save battery (and sanity) while browsing would be ad-blocking, believe it or not. Anything rendered on a page consumes more battery than whitespace. Having ad-blocking - either via an app like Weblock, or via the browser's own ad-blocking, or at router-level with a host file - will net you more power savings than browser switching, imho. If you have something that blocks social trackers, even better savings.

This post has been edited by G-17: May 27 2015, 05:54 PM

I don't use CIMB so cannot say. If you use Mercury try switching the user agent.

It's not a problem. Sometimes the calibration is just wrong. Your battery is still draining at a constant rate, it's just the the measurement is a bit off. This can be due to the OS, or sometimes the embedded controller in the battery. You'll notice that for example, a drop from 62% - 61% would take X amount of time, and the drop from 61% to 59% takes roughly [X x 2] amount of time. It's basically still the same rate of drain (all else being equal). No need to worry.

Some people say you can try training your phone's battery until dead, then recharging it to 100% and then doing a hard rboot (hold down power and home button until you see the Apple logo) to reset the battery calibration/measurement. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's really not a big problem either way. I've seen many phones suffer from this, regardless of OS.

This post has been edited by G-17: Jul 7 2015, 09:16 PM

It'll come with a built in water dispenser (official Apple paper cups sold separately - USD49.99 for a dozen). Of course, Apple will claim they invented water in the press release, and that idiot Rene Richie from iMore will post a million articles about how watery Apple's new water is.

This post has been edited by G-17: Aug 2 2015, 01:10 AM

Windows has always been buggy.