Marcin Juszkiewicz - phone

The end of my prepaid

2025-10-20T18:05:00+02:00

My phone number started in the previous millennium. It began with the Era operator as a postpaid customer, then I moved it to Plus (still postpaid) and 14 years ago I became a prepaid customer with Orange. This is going to change again.

Beginning

I do not remember why I went with prepaid instead of postpaid all those 14 years ago. Maybe conditions were better, or something.

I chose the ‘Orange Free na Kartę’ offer, where I went through the options and enabled everything that made sense to me. And disabled otherwise.

More data with every top-up? Checked.
More data with every monthly packet? Checked
Cost limit for the international roaming? Checked
No expiration of data as long as there is money on the account? Checked
No calls to 0-700 numbers? Checked
No text messages to paid numbers? Checked
etc.

Funny numbers

Months turned into years. Better “calls + data” packages were introduced, and I switched to a monthly one.

At some point, I collected 1 TB of data to use, then a second, a third, and additional 2 TB of data came from regular top-ups.

I went through my archive of text messages and generated this chart showing progress since 2018. The 1 TB jump this year was due to some offer change.

The amount of available data in time

Over 8 TB of data to use means “some kind of” unlimited data transfers, right? I have no idea how much time it would take to make use of it with normal use. I asked a friend, and he told me that, according to the operator data, I had used 226 GB in Poland and 14.2 GB abroad during the last year.

There were some funny moments, like the one where I was going abroad and noticed that, on my new phone, I did not have any offline music for a flight. And I was in a bus from Szczecin to Berlin already. Fetching a few GB of music took a few minutes — managed to grab all I wanted before crossing border (the GSM coverage in Germany, next to Polish border, was poor).

All that was due to the options I chose 14 years ago and the wise selection of “calls+data” monthly packets.

What’s next?

I am moving to a postpaid service, still with Orange. The first year will be free as it gets connected with my Internet-at-home bill, and the next year would cost me less than I am currently paying. It still offers unlimited calls/messages, “only” 300 GB of data per month and 27 GB of EU roaming. The last one may look small compared to 226 GB I have now, but it is still more than I normally use per month.

Android at Google I/O: what’s the point?

2018-05-09T09:49:00+02:00

Another year, another Google I/O. Another set of articles with “what’s new in xyz Google product”. Maps, Photos, AI, this, that. And then all those Android P features which nearly no one will see on their phones (tablets look like dead part of market already).

I have a feeling that this part is more or less useless with current state of Android. Latest release is Oreo. On 5.7% of devices. Which sounds like “feel free to ignore” value. Every 4th device runs 3 years old version (and usually lacks two years of security updates). Every 3rd one has 2 years old Nougat one.

Android versions usage chart

How many users will remember what’s new in their phones when Android P will land on their devices? Probably very small part of crazy geeks. Some features will get renamed by device vendors. Other will be removed. Or changed (not always in positive way). Reviewers will write “OMG that feature added by VENDORNAME is so awesome” as no one will remember that it is part of base system.

In other words: I stopped caring what is happening in Android space. With most popular version being few years old I do not see a point in tracking new features. Who would use them in their apps when you have to care about running on four years old Android?

Android pisses me off

2018-03-12T16:53:00+01:00

If you want smart phone then you are limited to Android or iOS. Other options just do not count. iOS philosophy and devices which run it are not something I want to own/use so I am left with Android.

My first Android device was Nokia N900 with Froyo (Android 2.2) based NITdroid. When I saw “K9 mail” on it I knew that Maemo goes to trash (it’s mail client “Modest” worked only in landscape and used font size for visually impaired people). So few weeks later I bought Nexus S. Then Nexus 4. Next was Samsung Galaxy S4 which I won in some contest. Then moved to Nexus 5, LG G3, and now use ZTE Axon 7. Had/have few tablets as well: first some Tegra2 based one with Honeycomb (sold quickly), Archos G9, Nexus 7 (2012) and finally Lenovo S8.

For most of time I tried to run latest possible Android on my devices. Of course non-vendor one cause Android world cares about device for a year (or year and half in best case) and then ignores it. I stopped caring are there any updates to my devices. Sure, they are full of security holes etc but sorry I am not planning to spend few hundred euros every year to replace three phones and tablet.

With Android Oreo (not present for any of my devices) Google announced ‘Project Treble’ which should fix some of that. I suppose that in 2020 year 40-50% of new devices may support it. With old versions of Android anyway because binary blobs will be too old to keep up with newer releases.

Switching device is the other thing. Doing backups, restoring backups, (re)configuring applications etc. Last time I did factory reset on one of phones it took 2 hours before Google Play Store finished installing applications. Including those I removed half year earlier. Of course forget about text messages or call history. WTF Google?

Backups are fun anyway. Official way is “hope that Google keeps backups of your app settings in a cloud”. Most of apps to do sensible backup require root. Which usually require factory reset to be done first. Or all they do is provide other UI for ‘adb backup’ command (which does some backup and then decides to do nothing for any random amount of time).

ADB itself is a joke. Sure, it can be used to send files over USB connection but it looks like it’s authors live in 90s and all they have is USB 1.1 host controller in their PCs. I can not find other excuse for its speed of 3 MB/s (yes, THREE megabytes per second). Again: WTF?

My current plan is to use my Axon 7 with Nougat for about a year (or two) until it finally die or meet with ground one time too many. And still be pissed off any time related with backups (changing devices in family or sending them for repair).

Nokia and their standard batteries

2016-11-28T22:57:00+01:00

Nokia. A company everyone knows and most of us probably even used one of their phones in past. They were better or worse but one thing was good - most of them shared batteries…

My daughter (8.5y old) uses Nokia E50 as her daily phone. Sim card is covered by duct tape to not fall out when phone hit a floor (previous one went missing in such situation). Mira records how she and her friends sing, does some photo sessions to her dolls etc.

But during weekend phone stopped charging. Hm… Is it charger? Nope, it was original Nokia one. Tried some crappy Chinese one with same result. So let’s check the battery.

Opened drawer, took Nokia 101. Inside was BL-5CB battery. Inserted into E50 got phone back online. But I like my 101 and keep it as a spare just in case.

Digged in a drawer with old devices. The one where I keep Sharp Zaurus c760, Sony Ericsson k750i, Openmoko FIC-GTA01bv3 and few other pieces of junk with some sentimental value. What I found there was Nokia 6230i which I got from Ross Burton during GUADEC 2007. Last time I used it about 5 years ago. But it had original Nokia BL-5C inside!

So I put that battery inside of E50, plugged charger and guess what… It started charging and phone booted! With over 11 years old battery!

During next few days I will buy BL-5C clone somewhere (they are 3-8€ now) and put it in my daughter’s phone.

Internet abroad

2015-08-22T17:52:00+02:00

I am not travelling as much as in previous year, but still try to visit some interesting places when I can. As it usually mean going abroad new sim cards are bought for such visits. Or not.

During last weeks I was in Germany, Iceland, USA and Canada. Needed Internet access in each of them but not everywhere that meant new sim card.

In Germany I am using ALDI Talk card which I bought few months ago. Cost was 12€ with 10€ credit on card. Internet access comes with 500MB data limit per day for 2€ and it usually covers my needs (it gets insanely slow after reaching limit).

Iceland was typical “one time use” card so I went for Nova as it was first available one. Costed one or two thousands ISK and gave me enough data for my 24h visit.

Then USA. Country where even prepaid is expensive. Bought T-Mobile sim card in 7/11 for 47USD including 35USD of credit of which 30USD went for 5GB data package. Getting card running requires registration with codes from starter kit. During 11 days of stay I used about 3GB of it. There were also huge amount of open wifi networks.

Canada was next on list. No sim card this time as 30CAD + 10CAD for 1GB of data was total rip-off. Living on open wifi networks sucks. With my next visit I wait until they got some sane prices ;D

How it looks in other countries?

Poland - buy any sim card in kiosk for 5PLN (1.25€), put into device and usually 1GB of data is available.

Czech Republic - last time I used O² with 375MB data package but do not remember price for it.

Belgium - 10€ on Lycamobile card (card available for free in shops) gave me 3GB data (for 7€).

Finland - Saunalahti card costs 4€ with 6€ credit. Maximum price for Internet access per day is 1.70€ so one card is fine for 3 days. Then you just buy next one or top up with minimum 10€.

I have also cards from UK, Hong Kong, Lithuania and Latvia but do not remember details any more. But all can be always checked on prepaid data sim card wiki.

Internet over GSM abroad? Forget it…

2014-01-08T12:04:00+01:00

Several times per year I am abroad for some conferences or holidays. And lack of Internet access from a cellphone there sucks.

In October I was in Munich, Germany for some internal Red Hat training. Had most of day for sightseeing but doing it without constant access to the Internet was a bit of disaster as I did not have time in previous week to mark interesting spots in Google Maps or to make any notes. And it was Sunday so all stores were closed == no way to buy local prepaid card.

In February I will visit Brussels, Belgium for FOSDEM and then Brno, Czech Republic for devconf.cz. Local SIM cards for both countries would be nice.

Did not yet checked Belgium ones yet but did that for Czech Republic. And man… situation there is awful. 200MB for 150CZK from mobil.cz looks like best offer for prepaid. Disaster… I wonder how slow it will be as well.

But there are exceptions. In United Kingdom and Hong Kong I went to first Three shop and got unlimited data at affordable price. Spain was a bit strange as I had to register SIM card. But for 20€ I got something like 2GB of data.

In Poland I am topping up my SIM with 100 PLN every 2-3 months and this gives me 6GB of transfer as a bonus. I now have 45GB of data available without any extra costs. And prepaid cards from all operators are available to buy at every corner…

ARMology

2013-06-08T17:30:00+02:00

When last time I was in Cambridge we had a discussion about ARM processors. Paweł used term “ARMology” then. And with recent announcement of Cortex-A12 cpu core I thought that it may be a good idea to write a blog post about it.

Please note that my knowledge of ARM processors started in 2003 so I can make mistakes in everything older. Tried to understand articles about old times but sometimes they do not keep one version of story.

Ancient times

ARM1 got released in 1985 as CPU add-on to BBC Micro manufactured by Acorn Computers Ltd. as result of few years of research work. They wanted to have new processor to replace ageing 6502 used in BBC Micro and Acorn Electron and none of existing ones did not fit their requirements. Note that it was not market product but rather development tool made available for selected users.

But it was ARM2 which landed in new computers — Acorn Archimedes (1987 year). Had multiply instructions added so new version of instruction set was created: ARMv2. Just 8MHz clock but remember that it was first computer with new CPU…

Then ARM3 came — with cache controller integrated and 25MHz clock. ISA was bumped to ARMv2a due to SWP instruction added. And it was released in another Acorn computer: A5000. This was also used in Acorn A4 which was first ARM powered laptop (but term “ARM Powered” was created few years later). I hope that one day I will be able to play with all those old machines…

There was also ARM250 processor with ARMv2a instruction set like in ARM3 but no cache controller. But it is worth mentioning as it can be seen as first SoC due to ARM, MEMC, VIDC, IOC chips integrated in one piece of silicon. This allowed to create budget versions of computers.

ARM Ltd.

In 1990 Acorn, Apple and VLSI co-founded Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. company which took over research and development of ARM processors. Their business model was simple: “we work on cpu cores and other companies pay us license costs to make chips”.

Their first cpu was ARM60 with new instruction set: ARMv3. It had 32bit address space (compared to 26bit in older versions), was endian agnostic (so both big and little endian was possible) and there were other improvements.

Please note lack of ARM4 and ARM5 processors. I heard some rumours about that but will not repeat them here as some of them just do not fit when compared against facts.

ARM610 was powering Apple Newton PDA and first Acorn RiscPC machines where it was replaced by ARM710 (still ARMv3 instruction set but ~30% faster).

First licensees

You can create new processor cores but someone has to buy them and manufacture… In 1992 GEC Plessey and Sharp licensed ARM technology, next year added Cirrus Logic and Texas Instruments, then AKM (Asahi Kasei Microsystems) and Samsung joined in 1994 and then others…

From that list I recognize only Cirrus Logic (used their crazy EP93xx family), TI and Samsung as vendors of processors ;D

Thumb

One of next cpu cores was ARM7TDMI (Thumb+Debug+Multiplier+ICE) which added new instruction set: Thumb.

The Thumb instructions were not only to improve code density, but also to bring the power of the ARM into cheaper devices which may primarily only have a 16 bit datapath on the circuit board (for 32 bit paths are costlier). When in Thumb mode, the processor executes Thumb instructions. While most of these instructions directly map onto normal ARM instructions, the space saving is by reducing the number of options and possibilities available — for example, conditional execution is lost, only branches can be conditional. Fewer registers can be directly accessed in many instructions, etc. However, given all of this, good Thumb code can perform extremely well in a 16 bit world (as each instruction is a 16 bit entity and can be loaded directly).

ARM7TDMI landed nearly everywhere - MP3 players, cell phones, microwaves and any place where microcontroller could be used. I heard that few years ago half of ARM Ltd. income was from license costs of this cpu core…

ARM7

But ARM7 did not ended at ARM7TDMI… There was ARM7EJ-S core which used ARMv5TE instruction set and also ARM720T and ARM740T with ARMv4T. You can run Linux on Cirrus Logic CLPS711x/EP721x/EP731x ones ;)

According to ARM Ltd. page about ARM7 the ARM7 family is the world’s most widely used 32-bit embedded processor family, with more than 170 silicon licensees and over 10 Billion units shipped since its introduction in 1994.

ARM8

I heard that ARM8 is one of those things you should not ask ARM Ltd. people about. Nothing strange when you look at history…

ARM810 processor made use of ARMv4 instruction set and had 72MHz clock. At same time DEC released StrongARM with 200MHz clock… 1996 was definitively year of StrongARM.

In 2004 I bought my first Linux/ARM powered device: Sharp Zaurus SL-5500.

ARM9

Ah ARM9… this was huge family of processor cores…

ARM moved from a von Neumann architecture (Princeton architecture) to a Harvard architecture with separate instruction and data buses (and caches), significantly increasing its potential speed.

There were two different instruction sets used in this family: ARMv4T and ARMv5TE. Also some kind of Java support was added in the latter one but who knows how to use it — ARM keeps details of Jazelle behind doors which can be open only with huge amount of money.

ARMv4T

Here we have ARM9TDMI, ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM925T and ARM940T cores. I mostly saw 920T one in far too many chips.

My collection includes:

ep93xx from Cirrus Logic (with their sick VFP unit)
omap1510 from Texas Instruments
s3c2410 from Samsung (note that some s3c2xxx processors are ARMv5T)

ARMv5T

Note: by ARMv5T I mean every cpu never mind which extensions it has built-in (Enhanced DSP, Jazelle etc).

I consider this one to be most popular one (probably after ARM7TDMI). Countless companies had own processors based on those cores (mostly on ARM926EJ-S one). You can get them even in QFP form so hand soldering is possible. CPU frequency goes over 1GHz with Kirkwood cores from Marvell.

In my collection I have:

at91sam9263 from Atmel
pxa255 from Intel
st88n15 from ST Microelectronics

Had also at91sam9m10, Kirkwood based Sheevaplug and ixp425 based NSLU2 but they found new home.

ARM10

Another quiet moment in ARM history. ARM1020E, ARM1022E, ARM1026EJ-S cores existed but did not looked popular.

UPDATE: Conexant uses ARM10 core in their next generation DSL CPE systems such as bridge/routers, wireless DSL routers and DSL VoIP IADs.

ARM11

Released in 2002 as four new cores: ARM1136J, ARM1156T2, ARM1176JZ and ARM11 MPCore. Several improvements over ARM9 family including optional VFP unit. New instruction set: ARMv6 (and ARMv6K extensions). There was also Thumb2 support in arm1156 core (but I do not know did someone made chips with it). arm1176 core got TrustZone support.

I have:

omap2430 from Texas Instruments
i.mx35 from Freescale

Currently most popular chip with this family is BCM2835 GPU which got arm1136 cpu core on die because there was some space left and none of Cortex-A processor core fit there.

Cortex

New family of processor cores was announced in 2004 with Cortex-M3 as first cpu. There are three branches:

Aplication
Realtime
Microcontroller

All of them (with exception of Cortex-M0 which is ARMv6) use new instruction sets: ARMv7 and Thumb-2 (some from R/M lines are Thumb-2 only). Several cpu modules were announced (some with newer cores):

NEON for SIMD operations
VFP3 and VFP4
Jazelle RCT (aka ThumbEE).
LPAE for more then 4GB ram support (Cortex A7/12/15)
virtualization support (A7/12/15)
big.LITTLE
TrustZone

I will not cover R/M lines as did not played with them.

Cortex-A8

Announced in 2006 single core ARMv7a processor core. Released in chips by Texas Instruments, Samsung, Allwinner, Apple, Freescale, Rockchip and probably few others.

Has higher clocks than ARM11 cores and achieves roughly twice the instructions executed per clock cycle due to dual-issue superscalar design.

So far collected:

am3358 from Texas Instruments
i.mx515 from Freescale
omap3530 from Texas Instruments

Cortex-A9

First multiple core design in Cortex family. Allows up to 4 cores in one processor. Announced in 2007. Looks like most of companies which had previous cores licensed also this one but there were also new vendors.

There are also single core Cortex-A9 processors on a market.

I have products based on omap4430 from Texas Instruments and Tegra3 from NVidia.

Cortex-A5

Announced around the end of 2009 (I remember discussion about something new from ARM with someone at ELC/E). Up to 4 cores, mostly for use in all designs where ARM9 and ARM11 cores were used. In other words new low-end cpu with modern instruction set.

Cortex-A15

The fastest (so far) core in ARMv7a part of Cortex family. Up to 4 cores. Announced in 2010 and expanded ARM line with several new things:

40-bit LPAE which extends address range to 1TB (but 32-bit per process)
VFPv4
Hardware virtualization support
TrustZone security extensions

I have Chromebook with Exynos5250 cpu and have to admit that it is best device for ARM software development. Fast, portable and hackable.

Cortex-A7

Announced in 2011. Younger brother of Cortex-A15 design. Slower but eats much less power.

Cortex-A12

Announced in 2013 as modern replacement for Cortex-A9 designs. Has everything from Cortex-A15/A7 and is ~40% faster than Cortex-A9 at same clock frequency. No chips on a market yet.

big.LITTLE

That’s interesting part which was announced in 2011. It is not new core but combination of them. Vendor can mix Cortex-A7/12/15 cores to have kind of dual-multicore processor which runs different cores for different needs. For example normal operation on A7 to save energy but go up for A15 when more processing power is needed. And amount of cores in each of them does not even have to match.

It is also possible to make use of all cores all together which may result in 8-core ARM processor scheduling tasks on different cpu cores.

There are few implementations already: ARM TC2 testing platform, HiSilicon K3V3, Samsung Exynos 5 Octa and Renesas Mobile MP6530 were announced. They differ in amount of cores but all (except TC2) use the same amount of A7/A15 cores.

ARMv8

In 2011 ARM announced new 64-bit architecture called AArch64. There will be two cores: Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 and big.LITTLE combination will be possible as well.

Lot of things got changed here. VFP and NEON are parts of standard. Lot of work went into making sure that all designs will not be so fragmented like 32-bit architecture is.

I worked on AArch64 bootstrapping in OpenEmbedded build system and did also porting of several applications.

Hope to see hardware in 2014 with possibility to play with it to check how it will play compared to current systems.

Other designs

ARM Ltd. is not the only company which releases new cpu cores. That’s due to fact that there are few types of license you can buy. Most vendors just buy licence for existing core and make use of it in their designs. But some companies (Intel, Marvell, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Apple, Faraday and others) paid for ‘architectural license’ which allows to design own cores.

XScale

Probably oldest one was StrongARM made by DEC, later sold to Intel where it was used as a base for XScale family with ARMv5TEJ instruction set. Later IWMMXT got added in PXA27x line.

In 2006 Intel sold whole ARM line to Marvell which released newer processor lines and later moved to own designs.

There were few lines in this family:

Application Processors (with the prefix PXA).
I/O Processors (with the prefix IOP)
Network Processors (with the prefix IXP)
Control Plane Processors (with the prefix IXC).
Consumer Electronics Processors (with the prefix CE).

One day I will undust my Sharp Zaurus c760 just to check how recent kernels work on PXA255 ;D

Marvell

Their Feroceon/PJ1/PJ4 cores were independent ARMv5TE implementations. Feroceon was Marvell’s own ARM9 compatible CPU in Kirkwood and others, while PJ1 was based on that and replaced XScale in later PXA chips. PJ4 is the ARMv7 compatible version used in all modern Marvell designs, both the embedded and the PXA side.

Qualcomm

Company known mostly from wireless networks (GSM/CDMA/3G) released first ARM based processors in 2007. First ones were based on ARM11 core (ARMv6 instruction set) and in next year also ARMv7a were available. Their high-end designs (Scorpion and Krait) are similar to Cortex family but have different performance. Company also has Cortex-A5 and A7 in low-end products.

Nexus 4 uses Snapdragon S4 Pro and I also have S4 Plus based Snapdragon development board.

Faraday

Faraday Technology Corporation released own processors which used ARMv4 instruction set (ARMv5TE in newer cores). They were FA510, FA526, FA626 for v4 and FA606TE, FA626TE, FMP626TE and FA726TE for v5te. Note that FMP626TE is dual core!

They also have license for Cortex-A5 and A9 cores.

Project Denver

Quoting Wikipedia article about Project Denver:

Project Denver is an ARM architecture CPU being designed by Nvidia, targeted at personal computers, servers, and supercomputers. The CPU package will include an Nvidia GPU on-chip.

The existence of Project Denver was revealed at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. In a March 4, 2011 Q&A article CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed that Project Denver is a five year 64-bit ARM architecture CPU development on which hundreds of engineers had already worked for three and half years and which also has 32-bit ARM architecture backward compatibility.

The Project Denver CPU may internally translate the ARM instructions to an internal instruction set, using firmware in the CPU.

X-Gene

AppliedMicro announced that they will release AArch64 processors based on own cores.

Final note

If you spotted any mistakes please write in comments and I will do my best to fix them. If you have something interesting to add also please do a comment.

I used several sources to collect data for this post. Wikipedia articles helped me with details about Acorn products and ARM listings. ARM infocenter provided other information. Dates were taken from Wikipedia or ARM Company Milestones page. Ancient times part based on The ARM Family articles. The history of the ARM architecture was interesting and helpful as well.

Please do not copy this article without providing author information. Took me quite long time to finish it.

Changelog

8 June evening

Thanks to notes from Arnd Bergmann I did some changes:

added ARM7, Marvell, Faraday, Project Denver, X-Gene sections
fixed Cortex-A5 to be up to 4 cores instead of single.
mentioned Conexant in ARM10 section.
improved Qualcomm section to mention which cores are original ARM ones, which are modified.

David Alan Gilbert mentioned that ARM1 was not freely available on a market. Added note about it.

I want to update my mobile phone

2012-12-28T22:36:00+01:00

During last few days I played with CyanogenMod 10.1 nightly builds on my Nexus S phone. Then went back to CM 10 as it is more stable. But this also reminded me that I have 2 years old device…

So I did another round of checking what are options. As it will be for next 2 years I want 2GB of RAM, 720p screen and LTE support. And there is very small amount of those :(

HTC Butterfly. MicrosD slot, 1080p screen, Japan only so far.
LG Nexus 4. Latest Android for few releases granted. But also lack of microSD slot and only 16GB of storage.
LG Optimus G. Base of Nexus 4. Not available outside of few operators (mostly US).
Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE (GT-9305). MicroSD slot, MHL video output.
Samsung Galaxy Note II. MicroSD slot, MHL video output.

Now it is time to complain :)

LG Nexus 4 is available only in some stores (or phone operators) for 450+ € — no Google Play Store like it was with earlier models (I do not call current state as selling). Also no LTE on European frequencies. No 32GB storage model.

Samsung GT-9305 sounds interesting. But… It is Exynos 4412 based. And I read The Saga of a CyanogenMod Exynos4 device maintainer by Andrew Dodd which gives clear message “avoid Exynos4 if you can”. If even Samsung update can break your device then something is going wrong. And so far SGS3 LTE lacks CyanogenMod support which is one of main blockers for me as it shows that there are no custom “ROMs” for it (I do not count images remixed from stock images).

Galaxy Note II is huge and would take some time to get used to it. Has CM support already. But again — Exynos4 ;(

So it looks like I need to wait another few months and check will there be something worth buying. In meantime I will stay with last CM10 release running on my Nexus S.