Okay, as everyone knows I went out and bought LG’s newest phone, the Lotus, to replace my HTC Touch. I was slightly reluctant about swapping from a Windows 6.1 Mobile phone to a custom OS phone. Needless to say that LG hit the nail on the head with this phone and I am MORE than happy.

As you can see from the picture, I went with the flashier purple Lotus because it had the flowers. Believe me, it is DEFINTELY an eye catcher. I have had three people this week stop me dead in my tracks wondering what kind of phone it was and where they could get it.

Now, from previous posts most people can tell that I am a power user when it comes to phones. I do A LOT with a cellphone. Updating 3-4 blogs, social networking (MySpace, Facebook, loopt, Vox, and Fetlife), Twittering, Brightkite, Three email accounts (1 personal, 1 work, and 1 business), Flickr, Ebay, Craigslist, and some network troubleshooting in various IT environments. So, when it comes to pushing a phone, I’ll do it. Which made me wonder if a phone that is not running one of the power user operating systems (Windows Mobile, RIM/Blackberry, Palm, Android, Linux) could actually keep pace with me.

First things first, here are the specs on the Lotus:

The phone is pretty stout on the spec side of things. I’ve had the phone a little over a week now and so far it is holding up well. I expected the keyboard to be too small and the buttons to close together, but I’ve found the exact oppisite to be true. The keys feel nice and have a solid tactile response when pressed. In fact, the keyboard is easy enough for me to use that I generall type one handed with my left hand (I’m right handed) while working. The keys feel A LOT better than the keypad LG used on the Rumor and the competitive Samsung phone. The phone itself feels pretty sturdy. Much more so than various Motorola’s I have compared it to (Razr, Rizr, Rockr, Krazr, etc.). However, it seems to maintain it’s lightweight feel. The external music buttons are easy to use, even though I dislike having to hold another button for three seconds just to turn off the keylock. Even though it IS worth being able to listen to music via the Motorola stereo bluetooth headset (also on sale for 59.99 ) without having to open the phone.

I’m using a 16 gig Micro-SD card with mine (they were on sale at Office Max for only 62 dollars!). I know, I know, some anus is going to make a comment about using more flash mem in my phone than my Ipod (Nano 4th Generation 8 gig in Red), but it was ON SALE!!!

Alright now down to the nitty gritty:

The whole One-Touch interface the Sprint has introduced on several phones makes things a lot easier. Hell, having Google Search, Gmail, MySpace, Facebook, Email, CNN, and Texts all be scrolling left or right has made things A LOT quicker.

Threaded SMS on this phone works in the opposite direction as what I am use to on the HTC Touch and IPhone. New messages are at the TOP and scroll DOWN to see older messages…

The stupid “Bubbles” thing on the home screen kind of annoys me. I initally had it set for my Horoscopes, local weather, and to track a few stocks I own, but have decided to scrap them all for various alternative applications.

Sprint’s “Social Zone” application looks GREAT on this phone and makes social networking SO much easier. It supports: MySpace, Facebook, Vox, Xanga, Rabble, Photobucket, BlackPlanet, AsianAve, FaithBase, GLEE, MiGente, Livejournal,and MTV Tr3s. You can find me on nearly all of them with the exception of the specific ones, or the Spanish one…

I have not played too many games on the phone, but I DO play Guitar Hero III on there every now and then. The game runs great (and it’s fun).

The speakerphone is SO MUCH BETTER than the HTC Touch’s, so that is a HUGE plus for me.

Ringtones are pretty crisp on it. Some ringtones that distorted on the Touch do not have that problem on the Lotus (”Jason Mraz - I’m Yours” for example).

Call quality is great.

Overall, the phone is rock solid and very functional. I have not been impressed by a phone in a long time, but this one has done that.

It’s not without it’s gripes however…

• No WiFi - A phone at this price, should have WiFi…
• That whole reverse ordered SMS really grinds my gears.
• The stupid “Bubbles” are nothing more than an annoyance.
• Having to find Java replacements for all of my Windows Mobile applications…

And the obligatory pics:

Here’s the unit closed. See the cute little flowers? LOL Yeah, music keys are accessable on the outside of the unit and as you can see, the external LCD is pretty high res compared to most:

Here’s the unit open:

A close up of the keypad. The buttons are well placed and have a nice tactile feel to them. However, I am SCREWED when it comes to dialing phone numbers that have letter in them… 1-877-GRACE and I am CLUELESS…

Close up of the home screen with the carousel and bubble/widgets:

How the texts look (not the threaded view, but the individual message themselves):

One of the Tiles on the Carousel… MySpace of course…

Here’s the Google tile… UBER handy…

Sprint’s Social Networking app… Like the Google tile, Uber-handy… Although it apparently has a problem resizing images in post if the pic is taken outside of the post…

Guitar Hero III in action. Actually a pretty freaking fun game…

And finally Sprint Navigator:

Overall, I have had the phone a few weeks and freaking LOVE it.

I tried to do handstands for you
I tried to do headstands for you
Every time I fell on you yeah every time I fell
I tried to do handstands for you
But every time I fell for you
I’m permanently black and blue, permanently blue for
you

I tried to do handstands for you
I tried to do headstands for you
Every time I fell on you yeah every time I fell
I tried to do handstands but every time I fell for you
I’m permanently black and blue, permanently blue for

You ooo …
For you ooo …
So black and blue ooo …
For you ooo …

I grabbed some frozen strawberries so I could ice your bruisy knees
But frozen things they all unfreeze and now I taste like
All those frozen strawberries I used to chill your bruisy knees,
Hot July ain’t good to me
I’m pink and black and blue

I got bruises on my knees for you
And grass stains on my knees for you
Got holes in my new jeans for you
Got pink and black and blue

Got bruises on my knees for you
And grass stains on my knees for you
Got holes in my new jeans for you
Got pink and black and blue for

You ooo …
For you ooo ….
So black and blue ooo …
For you ooo …

Do-doo-do-do-do
Do-doo-do-do-do
Do-doo-do-do-do
Do-doo-do-do-do
Do-doo-do-do-do

Warning Byte-Order Mark found in UTF-8 File.

The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.

Now, while technically validation still passes, me being the O.C.D. individual I am, had to fix this warning because it was driving me batty.

So, off I head to Google to research the issue before formulating a plan to fix it…

According to Wikipedia,

A byte-order mark (BOM) is the Unicode character at code point U+FEFF (”zero-width no-break space”) when that character is used to denote the endianness of a string of UCS/Unicode characters encoded in UTF-16 or UTF-32. It is conventionally used as a marker to indicate that text is encoded in UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32.

Upon further reading, Some encodings, such as UTF-16, need a BOM (Byte Order Mark) in order to work properly. UTF-8 is not one of them. However, some text editors add one anyway, so that they can more easily recognize the file as UTF-8.

Alright… Now I know where to start…

Basically, I had two options:

1. Using Notepad ++ (or a similar application) to open each file in the template and change the encoding to UTF-8
2. Using a hexadecimal editor, open each file and remove the first three blocks enumerated as “EF BB BF”

Just for the hell of it, I went with the 2nd option.

So, first thing I did was download all of the templates PHP files to temp folder on me desktop and fired up my trusty hex editor (I prefer XVI32 ). Opening each file in the editor I could immediately see what needed to be done:

Editing with a hex editor

As you can see from the first three blocks in the left hand pane, the hexadecimal “EF BB BF” for the BOM is present. In the right hand pane, you can see the resulting output in the file. Generally, you can only see this in a text editor that does not support BOM, or can be turned on/off manually.

So, to manually correct this in a UTF-8 document, all you have to do is delete those first three blocks, save the file, and reupload. One thing I did notice is that it had to be removed from not only the header.php file in the theme, but also the index.php, and footer.php file. I actually went through all of the PHP files in the theme that were set to UTF-8 and removed them just to be safe.

Thanks to PirateBay.org, I now have a copy of the title track and I must say, it’s not his usual style but it DOES sound pretty good.

Check it out: