iPod/iPhone control in the stereo deck is a much safer way to control how you listen to music in the car. When I get in, I place the phone in my center console, connect the USB cable and off I go. Unless my phone rings, I don’t have to touch the device at all. When the phone does ring, it fades out the music/podcast/whatever and pauses the playback while you are on the call. This has the added benefit of allowing me to actually hear my phone ring while listening to loud music.

Sound quality is excellent with the stock speakers in my car, and the difference in dynamic range over the stock head unit was astounding. I’m not a huge audiophile, but I tend to be a stickler for audio quality. I was pleasently surprised at how good it sounded, and very happy that I didn’t need to spend any additional dollars to upgrade my speakers.

The JVC KD-R600 also has the ability to change the color of the display, including 30 pre-set colors, and the ability to change the color using the jog dial to one of 30,000 options. I haven’t played with the custom colors yet, I’ve set mine to the dark blue to match the interior dash of my car.

I have noticed a couple of minor issues, and they are mostly iPhone related, but its worth mentioning. I notice that my iPhone seems to crash and reboot about once every week or two, I notice it mainly in the car as thats where I use it the most, but I have noticed my phone rebooting while I was watching TV, so I’m not going to blame my JVC KD-R600 just yet. Podcast playback suffers from an annoying quirk, it doesn’t seem to list the episodes in the order in which they should be played back, so if I happen to fall behind, then I have to try and figure out which episode to play manually. I’ve noticed this while using the iPhone via the Aux connector as well, so its not a JVC issue, its just tedious via the jog dial control. Podcasts with chapters tend to to start the chapter over again if you pause, disconnect, and then re-connect and hit play later, this appears to be related to how the JVC detects the chapters, so this issue falls under the KD-R600.

For about $160 Canadian, I’d recommend the JVC KD-R600 to any iPhone or iPod users out there as a great way to charge and use your iPod/iPhone safely while driving.Useful Gear, JVC KD-R600 mini review

Two posts ago, I was talking about the virtues of my new Rogers HTC Dream phone, and while it was good, and I was enamoured with the 3G speeds after using an EDGE BlackBerry. After about a month of usage, I found my self avoiding using it. I tried to love Google’s Android OS, and despite its charm and open stature, I found it lacking.

It was slow, the keyboard was awkward, and everything aside from Calendars, Mail, and Contacts required manual synchronizing. The lack of a notepad application by default was also very annoying.

Enter my new 16GB iPhone 3GS. Its fast, light, intuitive, and now eliminates my iPod touch, which makes it one less device to stuff into my pocket. I was also shocked at just how fast I am with its keyboard. I’d estimate that I am about twice as fast on my iPhone as I was on my blackberry, and about three times as fast as my HTC. Thats a pretty big statement, the HTC and blackberry both have physical keyboards, which means that tactile feedback isn’t everything for touch typists such as myself.

I’m glad I made the switch to iPhone, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. Now this may not be forever, since I was late to upgrade, I’ll have access to the HTC Dream for a while, and in the future, I may go back. But for now, I love my iPhone.

Rogers White HTC Dream

Android, Google’s Open Source OS for smart phones has finally come to Canada in the form of the HTC Dream (T-mobile G1 in the USA). Roger’s Android phone features some changes from the default Android 1.5 (Cupcake) OS that makes it unique to Canada, most notably, built in support for ActiveSync, allowing you to get push email from a Microsoft Exchange server.

There are some caveants, the most important being, if you want to use your Rogers HTC Dream with an Exchange Server, it must be running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 applied. In our testing, we discovered that HTC has formatted their https commands differently than the iPhone, and other ActiveSync devices causing a “Sync Protocol Error” to be displayed on the phone.

Overall, I quite like the device, and I am quite fond of its ability to run an SSH client full screen, and allowing me to use the 5 line qwerty keyboard to control servers and routers that I need access to remotely.  Web browsing is also nice and fast thanks to built in HSPA 3.5G support (7.2Mbps download, 2Mbps upload).  The built in mail client is very similar in operation to the Apple mail client that comes with the iPod touch, and iPhone.  I really like the built in Calendar’s ability to sync with Google Calendar, as well as exchange, showing the events in both calendars in different colors. This allows me to keep my personal calendar separate from my work calendar.

As expected, all of the Google apps really shine on Android, Maps, Talk, Youtube and Mail all work seamlessly with Google, and are activated with the very first setup screen when the phone is started up for the first time.

The Rogers version of the HTC Dream comes with a 2GB micro SD card already installed in the phone.

So far, I’ve only had the phone for 6 days, I’ll be posting a more detailed post on the phone after I’ve had a chance to use it for work for a month.

Post a comment if you have a question that you’d like me to answer.