After kicking up a bit of a stink with Dopod and Phonetec, I managed to get my phone back and repaired on the 13th December. 1 month after it was sent in for a warranty claim. It certainly is working much better in the battery life department. Using the application BatteryStatus, it shows that the phone is now drawing 81mA at idle with the backlight on instead of the 185mA it was consuming before. This means I get over double the battery life!This makes me a much happier person :)

25 days after my Dopod 838 Pro arrived at the Phonetec service centre, I’m still waiting for it back. It looks like it they have replaced every circuit board in the unit, and now they’re replacing the LCD screen as well. They say that they probably won’t get the parts for another 10 working days - so I’m tipping that I won’t get the phone back until the beginning of January. At this point, this is the longest warranty repair I’ve ever had to wait for - If I don’t get it until January, then I will have been waiting nearly 1 1/2 months. Great service cough.

Cisco have released version 8.3.3SR2 (registration required) of software for 7941 and 7961 phones. There are a number of bug fixes, however there seem to be quite a few outstanding issues. The release notes detail the changes in this version.

4 months ago I got myself a Dopod 838 Pro as I liked the idea of having wifi, 3G, Bluetooth and best of all, a QWERTY keyboard in a small device. As much as I like the phone, I have an awful time with battery life. On the stock battery, I was getting around 9 hours from a full 1300mAh battery.

This is not exactly useful as when I’m out and about, it’s usually longer than 9 hours. So, after trying an extended 3000mAh battery and only getting 14 hours usage, I’ve talked to the folks at Dopod (now HTC) about the possibility that the phone is faulty.

Thankfully, HTC agrees that I should get better battery life and have got me to send the phone to Phonetec. This is where I get annoyed. The phone has been there for 3 working days so far and hasn’t even been booked in yet. The 3-4 day turnaround I was promised is looking very unlikely. Stay tuned for more.

After years of mucking around with radios and a stalled attempt to get an advanced amateur radio license, I got talked into taking the foundation license study/exam session run by Amateur Radio Victoria. The foundation license is a newish class of amateur radio license that allows the operator to use up to 10 watts transmitter power on:

• 3.5 - 3.7 MHz (80 metres)
• 7.0 - 7.3 MHz (40 metres)
• 21 - 21.45 MHz (15 metres)
• 28 - 29.7 MHz (10 metres)
• 144 - 148 MHz (2 metres)
• 430 - 450 MHz (70cm)

For those interested in starting out with radio communications, you should check out this course. It’s great for people with no previous experience, and a great way to get on air.