Tag: iPhone

Quick thoughts on Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack (2021)
This week, Apple released an iPhone power accessory that’s been anticipated since the release of the iPhone 12 series late last year. In recent years, they’ve put out “battery cases” shortly after new phones — you’ve probably seen them: rubbery phone cases with a hump on the back, often ridiculed. With the MagSafe infrastructure on the new phones, everyone’s been waiting for a battery pack (or power bank) that you can just slap on the back.

After some delay, it’s finally arrived for USD$99 or S$139 and only in white. Bit of a missed opportunity to add some pops of color there, like the MagSafe card wallets they make in yellow and blue leather. I think it’ll pair quite well with this Cloud Blue silicone case though.

On the price: Apple offers an intriguing spread of products at the $99 mark. You can get a HomePod mini in some countries, which is a great sounding smart speaker with serious processing power equivalent to an old iPhone. Or you could get a first-generation Pencil to use with most iPads still on sale. And least apparently worth the value is the braided solo loop, a strap for the Apple Watch made from recycled yarn. I think this battery pack sits squarely in the middle in terms of value.

The Good:
- Slim (1.25cm) and lightweight as power banks go.
- iPhone 12 Pro stays usable and comfortable enough to hold when in use (YMMV, my hands are large).
- Starts charging your phone when attached; no buttons to mess with.
- Integrates with iOS and foolproof to manage. Your iPhone will slowly draw power and keep temperatures low, stopping the recharge at 80% or 90% to preserve your battery’s lifespan.
The Bad:
- Small capacity. Holds about as much power as an iPhone 12’s battery, but due to the inefficiencies of wireless charging, you can only expect it to impart an extra 50% or 60%, based on my experience so far. (Edit: I’ve tested it further and I think it may actually get you close to 80% of a full charge on an iPhone 12/12 Pro.)
- It does its job pretty slowly, so while traveling and using your phone to take photos, it may make more sense to make a fast-charge pitstop from a regular wired power bank than to go about your day with this slab attached.
- The pack can’t itself be charged wirelessly with a MagSafe charger or Qi pad. It may be technically possible since reverse charging from an iPhone works, but hasn’t been implemented.
My use case

I’m home most days, and if I were working I’d be doing that from a desk at home with MagSafe chargers, Qi chargers, USB-C to Lightning cables, and all sorts of equipment within reach. Why did I even buy this? Curiosity, boredom, and utter laziness to rise from the couch to plug my phone in as I drain it over the course of the day playing games and checking Twitter.

It’s worth mentioning that my 9-month-old iPhone 12 Pro currently has a battery health rating of 90%, which is abysmal. Most of the time, my iPhones rate about 97% after a full year of use. I don’t know what’s caused this one to degrade so rapidly: a manufacturing defect? My charging routine? My use of a wireless charging pad each night?

I wanted a way to conveniently extend the life of my iPhone so it can make it through a day without draining down past the 20% mark. When I do go out, I’m constantly worried about ending up with a flat battery. I need my iPhone to pay for things, take public transport, or get a cab at the end of a night. But I want to go out unencumbered, no bag, just pockets. With Apple Pay and other mobile payment platforms, I no longer carry a wallet most times.

Alternative solutions

As mentioned, one could use a regular power bank with a cable. They offer much larger capacities, are cheaper, and can charge faster (up to the 18W USB-C PD supported by iPhones). This does require carrying a bag or wearing cargo pants that have wires coming out of one pocket and going into another, though.

Or if a magnetic wireless solution is preferred, then there are again lower-cost alternatives from Anker, Hyper, Mophie, and many OEMs. These are usually half the price of Apple’s, slightly thicker and more unsightly, but offer a little more battery life. They also lack the OS integration and you have to start/stop charging with a button, although it’s easy to imagine future models hacking some iOS support the way fake Chinese AirPods are able to show up in the battery widget.

Personally, I think I’ll be keeping this for the peace of mind it gives when I leave the house empty-handed. It’s easy to carry separately in a jeans pocket, smaller than a phone or wallet, and has enough power to extend even a failing phone battery to last through a day and night of usage. It won’t get you through two days, but I don’t think that’s what it’s for. It’s a safety net, and a solution for lazy couch charging at home.
With or without a MagSafe leather case, it fits quite well in the hand while attached to an iPhone
July 23, 2021

Apple, Gadgets, iPhone, Mobile, Technology
Week 27.21

Mon, 28/6, 9:31 PM

Today’s the 28th day of my sabbatical, so I guess it qualifies as a full month now. It may be premature to declare, but guys, I’m sure I could do this for a year or two, no sweat. If I didn’t have a fixed period planned, I wouldn’t even be counting the days.

But since I am, it feels like the first phase is over. As occupied as I’ve felt, it’s only been the equivalent of lying about listlessly, eating empty calories, and falling asleep in the sun. There’s a feeling beginning to stir that I should be doing more. That a pen should be on paper, a sprite on screen, or a running shoe on pavement. Okay definitely not the last one.

Am I being too ambitious? Wasn’t the point to do nothing? I’d better let this creative despondency build up a little bit more just to be sure.

Tue, 29/6, 3:02 PM

My iPhone 12 Pro is less than a year old and its peak battery capacity has already dropped to just 90%. For comparison, my iPhone X still retained 97% after more than a year of service. I’m wondering if it’s because I almost exclusively charge wirelessly these days? In any case, I don’t seem to be alone in this.

12 Pro since it's launch day is aging far less gracefully. Worse than 11 Pro Max. pic.twitter.com/qxmcS7pbt8
— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) June 28, 2021

7:15 PM

Have I always had such noticeable mood swings? Stupid question. If they were noticeable before, I’d have noticed them. Now I’m keenly aware of how I can go from low-energy miserable to happily fascinated and back again in one afternoon.

As the saying goes, “the devil makes work for idle thumbs”. I potted around my finances for a little bit and realized StashAway’s cash management offering performed abysmally in June against already low expectations, like 0.8% APR. For small amounts of emergency cash, I don’t see why one wouldn’t just employ stablecoins and yield farming to get closer to 10%. So that’s what I’ll focus on doing next.

Earlier today I had a chat with an old friend that I haven’t talked to in probably a decade. But we’ve known each other for… 25 years? Long enough that memory is less like a map and more like a stack of snapshots of road signs. But of course we live in the post-Facebook days, so I often see updates on Instagram or Twitter. Quite recently, I clicked on a link in one of her tweets. Then last week as I was going through my blog archive and saw her name come up, it seemed natural and easy to just reach out and say hi. Then she tells me she’s also seen my online activity lately, and even came by to read this blog. Huh.

Listen, I believe there are no coincidences when marketing algorithms are involved. Someone you know checking something out on a platform is quite likely to put it in your feed as well. As unintended consequences go, I’m really happy with this one. But if they can prime my antisocial brain to reconnect after years and years, you’d best believe they can make you buy that Cheesy Zinger Double Down meal from KFC.

Wed, 30/6, 6:19 PM

I’ve spent the last four hours playing Call of Duty Mobile and absolutely slaughtering what I hope were other players half my age. Two people checked in with me today and asked how things were going. I told them I was basically larping as the deadbeat, couch-dwelling boyfriend they probably had in college. I have FPS headache now, but god it feels good.

Fri, 2/7, 4:07 PM

I’ve done little else but Call of Duty since Wednesday and am now Level 80 in the game, which sounds like a big deal. Only now that I’ve hit this watershed achievement, the game is exposing me to other players up to Level 150. They keep moving the goalposts.

I’ve even ended up paying real Singapore Dollars for the current season’s (really just a month-long themed event) Battle Pass, which gives me all sorts of useless gear as I keep progressing. Other games’ in-app purchases give you collectible characters and items that impact gameplay. In Call of Duty Mobile, you get outfits and wacky paint jobs for your guns (!) that no player will ever see except if you shoot them in the face from two feet away. When I saw this before I got addicted, I thought skins for guns was the pinnacle of dumb. Now I’m Level 80 and won’t be caught dead with a plain black assault rifle.

Sat, 3/7, 5:48 PM

I’ve just been dosed with the second shot of the vaccine and am now waiting in the observation room. I don’t know if I’m imagining the slight lightheadedness.

Almost everyone I know has had side effects after the second dose, some quite vicious. I’m already expecting to spend the next two days in bed with a fever and headaches. I wonder if I can still play Call of Duty Mobile in that state.

When I did some quick maths to estimate how much I’m spending per day on this sabbatical, that is to say net outflow on housing and taxes and expenses not being offset by income, it was a slight shock. While I was always fine with the idea of effectively paying for this break, I hadn’t framed it as “pay $x daily to play Call of Duty Mobile”.

Epilogue

OOF. That second dose of Moderna hit hard. I wanted to post on Sunday but I couldn’t even bring myself to look at a screen all day. It started 9 hours after the shot with chills in the middle of the night. All day I had a high fever, headaches, an elevated heart rate of 110–120 bpm for about 18 hours, and all the delirious dreams that come with those. It was extremely stressful trying to sleep but being plunged into a maze of nonsensical images and incompletable tasks instead. At one point I woke up and tried to explain what I had been seeing, and it felt like I had brain damage because the words just weren’t available.

July 5, 2021

Algorithms, COVID-19, Gaming, iPhone, Personal Finance, Social Web
Week 52.20
- I weighed myself at the end of last weekend’s staycation, which arguably came at the end of a multi-month odyssey of bad eating, and found that I was heavier than I have been in at least 6 years. So the first half of this week was devoted to eating salads and lowering my caloric intake as much as possible. I also skipped drinking every day, and I think it’s come down a touch. I will have to keep this going in an effort to return to a figure that could be called normal (both on the scale and irl).
- No surprises, but Christmas was different and the lead up was even less detectably Christmas-feeling than it is every year — I am prone to declaring that ‘THIS year, it really doesn’t feel like Christmas’, every single time. Nonetheless, efforts were made, and I shall probably look back on this year’s edition with fondness.
- There was work to be done up to the last minute of Christmas Eve, and there’ll be some work to do next week too, but I am looking forward to a bit of a rest and some reading/gaming in early January. I say this here to remind myself to actually do it, and not just scroll Twitter on the couch for days.
- It’s not often that I fire up the podcast app and listen to anything, but I uncharacteristically spent a few hours this week on financial/investing-related content, which will hopefully help to set up a better 2021. I don’t know why I spent the first half (or more) of my life resistant to the idea of understanding economics and money; well, I suppose I can make a guess as to the underlying repulsions, but it’s never too late to change your mind and try to let some new thoughts in.
- My birthday was months ago, but I think the realization only started to land in the last few months (and almost completely subconsciously!). I was talking to someone awhile ago about how you just one day catch yourself changing up stuff or trying new things, and oh hey what a coincidence 4-0, and they said yeah, it’s a real thing and it’s started happening to me too, except a year in advance. I’m always lagging.
- A reunion of sorts: Many years ago, possibly a decade, I chanced upon a wonky, clearly Not Proper Art painting at the Affordable Art Fair and sort of fell for it. It was an underdog. It was absolute innocence, defenseless against the world. Kim hated it and walked us away. I wanted to go back for another look and maybe take a photo but never got the chance. In any case, it was way too expensive for me to even consider. As with all things that get away, you want them even more, irrationally. I remember calling the gallery up for the local artist’s name and writing it down in Evernote. And all these years, I’ve been holding a vivid memory of it in my head, and I bring it up from time to time to tease and horrify Kim with the idea of putting it up in our home. We found it online this week. It’s still unsold, at the same gallery. The price has come down by about half. I have money these days. It’s still higher than it probably should be. I don’t know. It’s almost exactly as I remembered it. Maybe I’ll buy it just to scratch the itch and close the book.
- App of the Week: Mimi Hearing Test [iOS]. This free app will test your hearing in about 5 minutes if you have a pair of headphones that they’ve calibrated for, and tell you how degraded your ears are. It outputs an “audiogram” assessment to Apple’s Health.app, which can be used to tune the sound quality of AirPods beyond the usual Hearing Accommodations. It’s pretty great and I think everyone should try it.
December 28, 2020

Apps, Art/Culture, Headphones, Health, iPhone, Personal Finance
Backbone One unboxing

As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been waiting for the arrival of my Backbone One controller. It was dispatched at the end of October but took ages to leave the USPS, probably because they had some important envelopes to deliver at the same time. It arrived last night after about 10 days, and I’ve gotta say, first impressions are good.

It’s a good size and feels very nice in the hands, with my only concern being that the er… spine of it cuts directly across the lowest of the camera lenses on my iPhone 12 Pro, and it looks like the lens rests against that bit of plastic. I doubt it’ll cause any damage; those lens covers are sapphire crystal, but it looks a little odd. I’m not sure that it will fit an iPhone 12 Pro Max, but their site claims that it will.

It beggars belief that I could kill 16 people in CoD Mobile without dying once, but that’s just what happened the first time I snapped this thing on. It’s also transformed GRID Autosport from a game that I bought once and regretted immediately into something that feels truly console-like, and I don’t mean a Nintendo Switch. The graphics and haptics on this thing are way ahead of any racing game I’ve seen on that system.

November 10, 2020

Backbone, Games, iPhone, mobile gaming, unboxing, videogames, Videos
Week 45.20
- I’m writing this bit in advance. We are still awaiting a definitive result from the US election and yes, full acknowledgment of the absurdity and the “how is this even happening” of it all. I just read an emotional Joe Biden story on Twitter and it killed me. Someone also posted this chat conversation with her mom, a Trump supporter, and it’s truly depressing how easy it now seems to bamboozle people until they’re out of touch with reality. Hopefully by the time I post this, some semblance of the right outcome would have materialized.
- Narrator: It has.
- Maybe I’m feeling so emotional about it because I’ve just had a 9% alcohol Strong Zero clone from our local 7-Eleven, imported from Japan no less. It might be the same as their house brand chuhai drinks over there, sold here for much more money given that our alcohol tax is so high. The promotion price was two cans for S$11.
- Check out this photo, taken with my iPhone 12 Pro. I didn’t have a black backdrop or any other kind of product photography apparatus. I discovered that you can simply do this with Portrait Mode and a kitchen countertop. Miraculous! The quality of the effect is much better than I recall it being before, so maybe this is something the new iPhones’ ISPs have enabled?
- I’m still waiting on my Backbone One, which has been in the US Postal Service’s care for nearly 10 days now, with no indication of whether it’s even left the US yet. I get it, they’ve been busy, but I really want to kick more butt in Call of Duty Mobile.
- For reasons unknown, I’ve been doing quite well in online CODM matches. My past experiences on console have been the same as any old guy’s: instant death at the hands of children. But for some reason I’m consistently ending games as the MVP and killing at a higher rate than others. Is it fake? Do they put you up against bots that look like real people? Or have I achieved some kind of middle-aged gamer renaissance?
- The Playstation store is having one of those sales again, and I managed to pick up Shadow of the Tomb Raider — Definitive Edition for just S$20. It’s the third installment of the reboot trilogy, and I’ve been waiting for it to go on sale for ages. I think it first came out as an Xbox exclusive and didn’t come to PS4 until a year had passed. Alas, my plans to play it over the weekend failed.
- Instead, I found a little time to speed through the endgame of Ghost of Tsushima, just to get the end of the story. A really pretty game, but I think I’m mostly tired of open-world action games. In terms of time over value extracted, I’d rather play a linear beat-em-up if the combat is going to be the main point of it. The rest of it is just getting from A to B, and exploration never felt that rewarding. An open-world game should let you feel like you live in it, and just chill or do nothing but in a meaningful way? Maybe that’s why Breath of the Wild felt so different and resonated with many people; just living and surviving in the outdoors was a complete game unto itself, separate from the narrative.
- We watched Netflix’s popular new series The Queen’s Gambit over the weekend. I don’t like horror films so I missed her in The VVitch, but from the first moment I saw Anya Taylor-Joy’s wide-set eyes in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, I’ve been wondering how everyone could just play it so cool while such a face exists in nature. I don’t know that the show could work with another actress; all its scenes of intense concentration and psychological battle hinge on her staring directly into the camera/your soul.
November 9, 2020

Alcohol, Games, iPhone, mobile gaming, TV, videogames
Week 43.20

October 19–25 2020:

The new iPhone 12 Pro does not disappoint, and I was foolish to think that I could skip this year. Well yes the camera is only a little bit better, I have no 5G networks to make use of, and the previous A13 processor was already so fast that the massive speed improvements here are imperceptible, but it all adds up. The size is just right, and the flat-sided form factor is nearly flawless (remove the camera bump and we’re there). I love that I can hold it lengthwise between thumb and forefinger with perfect stability — whose stupid idea was it to have rounded edges for the last six years?

Last night I tuned into a two-hour-long livestream about the process of developing and designing a book. It was part of Craig Mod’s Special Projects club (a sort of self-managed Patreon), and the subject was his recently released Kissa by Kissa — How to Walk Japan, Book One.

I managed to snag one of the first edition copies, and it was fascinating to be walked through it almost page-by-page by the person who put it together. We were a small group of live viewers, shadowy presences felt through a chat box, learning about unsung details and BTS production setbacks that makes me see my copy very differently. For instance, the book is not the physical size it was meant to be, but a binding challenge meant that it had to be done by hand and everything grew by about 2mm in one direction. Parts of it are perfect, and others are honest reflections of the process. I don’t think I’ve ever held a book and appreciated it as a design object this much until now. And while I’d still love to have one of the new and improved second-edition copies, supporting small projects through the ups and downs of the journey is what Kickstarter purchases are supposed to be about. 🤷‍♂️

Oh, and some friends came over and we got an adorable early Christmas house gift. I’d never heard of this Jellycat brand, but I am apparently in the minority. It needs a name, any suggestions?

All the photos in this post were taken with the Sigma 30mm 1.4 DC DN lens I got back in August. I quite like it!

I’ve been drinking too much and still sleeping too poorly. Nevermind! One recent addition to the liquor shelf has been Luxardo Maraschino, which you never really see for sale out in the open here; I got some online. It mostly opens up possibilities for all my ryes and bourbons.

In all likelihood, I’d encountered the Japanese rapper Awich before because her name rings a bell, but wasn’t into what she was doing at the time. Now she seems to have made a bit of a leap forward. Her new Partition EP slaps? Is that what we say now? I went back and compared it to some of her earlier stuff, and the production is way better and she’s got a great flow. Also the videos are intense.

October 25, 2020

Alcohol, Apple, Books, iPhone, Music, Photography, Photos