Saturday, 15 November 2014

Three Bells - Heathrow Terminal 3

OK so a post about food, and a where to go if you are on the move., and this is one I can recommend.

The Three Bells, terminal 3 Heathrow is not through security in terminal 3, it is just before that. When you go into the terminal itself, after you have checked in, go up the stairs and head to the far right of the terminal. You will walk past the security and see signs for the toilets. The Three Bells is on your left, next to an Italian I think.

I went in there at 1800, prior to a flight to Dubai at 22:00. The place was full, but I didn't want to go through security. The place was full, but the service was excellent, their is table service and it is quick.
I sat down, was asked by a lovely waitress what I would like after about 5 mins. I ordered a Guinness and Gammon and Chips.
The Guinness was with me in about 3 minutes and the food 10 minutes after that. OK it was not Michelin star food, but it was like a good honest pub grub. I was more than happy with what I received and the portion size was very good, some of the guys I was with had fish and chips, it was so large that they had to share.
The 2 Guinness and the food only came to under £20 and for an airport I was impressed.

Results:

Price: 8.5 out of 10

Quality: 8 out of 10

Service: 9 out of 10

Total: 8.5 out of 10

iPhone to Sony Xperia Z3

Another review about something not related to food, could still be of use to some.

Recently I decided it was time to get a new phone.
After years of having an iPhone (which I was more than happy with) I decided I wasn't prepared to pay the large sums for a new iPhone 6 especially as I wanted to have at least 128gb of space. So I looked through the alternative, finally settling on the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact.

Below is the review of the phone and how easy it was to transfer.

Cost difference:

Basically the iPhone 6 compact not that far below £800 for the 128GB, the Z3 I got by looking around a for £400 and I paid £40 for a 128GB SD card.

Transferring all data from iPhone to Sony?

Surprisingly this isn't as hard as what you may think. Sony has an inbuilt app that allows you to transfer all of your contacts, iPhone music library, and photos to the new phone, if you want. This can be done from the computer or the phone itself.
In regards to the contacts their are a few small issues, what is does is it links the contacts on your phone to your Google account, so if you happened to already have a Google account with people on it, that are also in your iPhone you will have to pick which contact you want to keep.
Although there is some messing about, generally I would say this is easy.

If you used the mac calender, syncing it with your iPhone, this can still be done with your new android device, by downloading an app called SmoothSync. Great app and worked well.

What to do about apps?

Most of the apps that you have on iTunes are available on android and in a lot of cases they are free.
OK it is a pain in the arse when you first get the phone to go through your apps and look for them on Google, but this is really only a one off, and once you have done it once you will not need to do it again.

Apps that I would recommend getting are:
AVG antivirus - Virus Scanner
AVG cleaner - Cleans up your phone from all the junk you collect
Greenify -  This will turn off apps that are not running and save your battery.
File Commander - A bit like windows explorer, lets you look through the folders on your device
Tasker: If you want to customise your phone
Office Suite -  Office basically
Adobe - So you can read pdf's
FireFox - Sometimes a little better than Chrome
VLC player - Plays any video file I have ever come across

Anything else is personal preference.

The difference between Android and Apple.

Lets face it, anyone who has used an iPhone knows it is so simple to use, anyone can pick one up and just use it out of the box. Yes the more you play and the more you use it the better you will get and the more you know, but that is the same with anything.

The Sony and other android devices are a little harder to use. I mean yes you can take it out of the box and make calls, send text etc but using the apps, understanding the widgets and all the other customization stuff is a little harder.
It took me a little looking on Google and  YouTube to figure out how I wanted it setup, but in general it is easy to do.
One thing that I do find frustrating is that when you close the apps i.e. press the button in the right hand corner and swipe them off the screen, this doesn't stop the app running in the back ground. Which will use up your battery. However Greenify will get ride of this for you, (just remember if you get this app you have to give it admin permission to do its job, this is found in the settings of the phone)

Conclusion:
Although it may take you a little bit more time to get used to the phone, it really isn't that big a deal, even with a small amount of playing you will be fine, in the end if you want to you can customize it a lot more than an iPhone, even the keyboard can be changed, it is a welcome change to be honest.

Issues.

OK so I did find one thing that is very very annoying. After about a week of having the phone, I broke the screen, long story.
Anyway I got a new one through the insurance.
Now I thought that the back up of the phone would allow me to download all of the content of the phone, display setting and everything as you can with an iPhone (effectively replacing the new phone with a mirror of the old one). This is not the case with the Sony, when you restore from back up. Your contacts, apps etc will be added back onto the phone, but not how you have set them out on the phone or some other phone settings.

Yes you can say that you shouldn't break the phone, but I have to admit that the way Apple does it, is SOOO much better and easier.

Conclusion.

Would I recommend moving from iPhone to Android?

If you are happy paying the higher cost of the iPhone then I would stay with them, however for about half the price you can have the same spec phone, in fact in a lot of ways a better spec phone for half the price. Plus with the removable memory, such a good feature.

So the answer is a definite: YES.....

Which is a better system/phone?

This is a hard question, it is each to their own, I would say that apple is much more simple to use, better back up and better support, but android is more customization, there are more phones out there on the android system, each with there own merits.I like them both.

All I can say is give it a GO, if you don't like it sell it on eBay, you wont of lost a lot.

Am I happy as a convert?

YES

I hope that this has helped some of you out if your thinking of leaving the giant that is Apple.