“Perfection lies in small things, but perfection is no small thing” - Henry Royce, Rolls Royce Ltd.
20th November 2020 / Issue #396
giffgaff Happenings
by bluemoonbaz
End of Year Charity Nominations 2020 the results are in
The counts and checks have been completed, here are the results:
giffgaff will keep us updated on the amounts each charity will receive, as soon as it’s been confirmed. Head over here for all the latest details.
Black Friday sneak peek deals
Yes, it’s here, and as giffgaff members, you have first dibs on these deals. Head over here and see if you can grab a bargain.
Changes to financing with Klarna
Since giffgaff have switched phone loans provider, there have been a few changes made to the way in which financing will work going forwards. Pop over here for the helpers update, and finer details about buying phones here. Klarna’s Openness policy can be found here.
Our weekly roundup from your fellow members’ recent discussions and or interesting posts
Say Hello!
by kathleen414
Please welcome our member @midit37 who says “Hi I am new today! I hope I don’t regret this lol, looking at posts on here I doubt I will!”. I’m sure you won’t 🧡. Pop over here and spread the giffgaff love.
Say hello to @frank11991 who has recently joined us 🤗 and is looking forward to hearing from you. You can find our new friend here.
Hiya and welcome to another new giffgaffer @steve59576, who left us this lovely message 🧡 “Hi everyone just got on giffgaff it’s one of the best networks I have been on go on giffgaff”. That’s amazing! Say hello to our new member here.
Happy giffgaffiversary!
by ijustcantdoit
11 years today
@allan1954 says “On this fantastic forum and network.” We appreciate all your hard work. It’s our members like Allan that make giffgaff not only strong, but able to go from strength to strength.
Today’s the day, it’s 10 years…
@brulaw says “It’s been 10 good years and I’m looking forward to many more years with this great network and brilliant community, here’s to the future and to more great times for us all, happy giffgaffing everyone.”
2 years today
@jpwrr17 says Thanks for reminding me giffgaffers, you’re all great 👍 and I love it on here ❤️"
If it’s YOUR giffgaffiversary, please let the team know by sending a private message to @ijustcantdoit.
On This Day In History
by jammydodge
1815 Following the second abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Napoleonic wars.
France according to the Treaty of Paris (1815) - Source.
1969 The fourth man in the Cambridge Spy Ring, Anthony Blunt, was stripped of his knighthood after admitting to being a spy for Russia. Blunt was the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and director of the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Source
Photo Of The Week
by brulaw
This week’s featured photo is Autumn sunset by @giffgaffstumartin. Some of the comments on the photo included:
- “Beautiful” (crshaw1)
- “My favourite time of year, that is good enough to be framed and hung on the wall” (frenchielove)
- “Stunning photo mate” (bluemoonbaz)
- “Lovely” (anth006)
- “That’s a cracker, thanks for posting” (soundmike)
- “That’s a lovely photo” (yvonnearmstrong)
- “Amazing photo, you have captured it beautifully” (tinawilliams0410)
Another week and another tough choice, once again you’ve all shared some brilliant image for everyone to admire and enjoy. Thank you all and please keep the photos coming.
Office App
by toxiic
Hi everyone. This week I thought I’d briefly cover quite a handy app: the (Microsoft) Office app for Android and iOS.
The Microsoft Office app is useful for people who use Microsoft Office programs on their devices - the main ones being Word, PowerPoint and Excel. And, the app pretty much combines them and some other features into one app so you can see all your documents in one place (though note that Office 365, Microsoft’s subscription service is needed to access all the features). You can create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents within the app though realistically how easy it is depends on the device you’re using. If your phone has a particularly small screen then you may find it difficult to type. You also need to consider whether the Office app is actually compatible with your phone. If this is an issue, you could consider downloading Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft’s other apps
separately as each of its services has a separate app - the Office app just tries to merge them.
As well as Word, Excel and PowerPoint there’s a few extra features built inside the app. You can transfer files between your phone and computer, share nearby files to other phones (they both seem to need to have the app open), extract text from a picture you take (of course, this depends on how clear your writing is), extract a table from your picture into Excel, sign a PDF (presumably doing your signature with your finger on your device), scan pictures to PDF, create a PDF from your pictures, convert a document into PDF, convert a PDF into a Word document. You can also scan a QR code with your phone’s camera, create a form (survey etc) and practice your PowerPoint presentations by opening your presentation on your phone and talking to your phone (as if you were doing your presentation) and the app then shows you your words per minute pace, sensitive phrases, originality, pitch and your use of fillers. Quite handy that one!
Overall, the Office app is one to consider if you do often use Microsoft’s software (as opposed to other software like Google Docs, Libre Office etc) though do check if it’s possible and feasible for your device to run it. You can download it from the Google Play Store and iOS.
Disclaimer: I, nor giffgaff, nor The gaff Team will be responsible for any consequences occurring if the aforementioned companies or information is used. No monetary or non-monetary benefits have been received by the companies mentioned in the above article. Thanks for reading. If you’re interested, check out my content hub on the giffgaff forum here.
Tech Developments
by revilo10
OnePlus Nord: A hands-on review - Part 1
It’s been a while since we got hands-on with a new device here on Tech Developments, but every now and again I live to dive into the roots of what Tech Developments is and get hands-on with a device. This week we will be taking a look at the OnePlus Nord, a mid-tier phone priced from around £379 in the UK by Chinese phone firm OnePlus. It’s no secret I am a lover of Chinese devices, my last daily driver phone was the Xiaomi Mi 8, which I have had now for just over a year and a half. So for my next adventure, my options opened up to OnePlus’ new revolutionary mid-tier device that was teased and launched back in July.
I have been using the Nord as my daily phone for just over a week now and it has completely replaced my old one. First of all, let’s take a brief look into the specs that fuel the Nord. We start out with a few RAM and storage options, in the UK we have a choice between 8GB of RAM with 128GB storage or 12GB and 256GB. I found that 128GB is pretty ample for someone who uses an average amount of storage for downloading music, taking videos and photos in high quality but also downloading a heavy amount of apps. I put the RAM through its paces this week with some high-intensity games and video/music streaming as well as app usage, however, the 8GB of RAM was perfectly able to handle the stress I put on it. The Nord comes with a 90Hz screen on both options and although there is a little bit of a lack of power in the 8GB option, I would say the price difference makes the 8GB option with 128GB of storage a very viable and probably the most cost-effective option of the two, even though there is no expandable storage option. The difference in performance is minimal and practically unnoticeable to a regular phone user. The screen itself is a 6.44” AMOLED with a refresh rate of 90Hz which is consistent and although OnePlus has taken out some expensive extras from the device to reduce costs, the difference between a standard flagship OnePlus, such as the 8, is minimal in terms of the smoothness of the phone. Despite the processor being a somewhat questionable Snapdragon 765, the software optimisations along with the hardware make the phone a joy.
The camera on the Nord is a funny one, it comes with 6 lenses, 4 on the back 2 on the front. A 48MP wide lens, 8MP ultrawide, 5MP depth and 2MP macro lens. On the front, we see a 32MP wide lens and an 8MP ultrawide lens. OnePlus claims to have pulled the camera straight from its flagship of this year, the 8. The quality is the questionable factor in my experience so far, I haven’t toyed around with any of the pro camera features yet and from some of the shots I’ve seen the camera has great potential, but it might take some optimising and learning for a standard phone user to get the high-quality that people might expect to just point and shoot with a device such as an iPhone.
The phone’s software and extra features are a huge draw, with an effective in-screen fingerprint reader, good water resistance (despite the lack of an IP rating) and other highly optimised software features make the phone highly durable and effective for the wear and tear of everyday life. OxygenOS, OnePlus’ iteration of Android 10 is truly a stripped back, raw operating system that comes with highly customisable visual aspects as well as settings and features to allow you to make the phone truly feel yours. One interesting feature I noticed recently is an automatic captioning system, which takes any audio coming out of your phone and if it is recognisable as words, the Nord will display captions on the screen. OxygenOS has always and will always be my favourite OS and skin for Android, with a very Google-ish simplistic feel to it, but also the ability to easily add other software options, it is an OS like no other.
Once again thank you for reading, next week we’ll dive into some other specs and summarise whether or not the phone is worth it! See you then!
Got a tip, suggestion or story you want to contribute to Tech Developments? Message me on the forums: @revilo10
Thanks for reading!
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