TRRS jack / Improving battery performance

May 6, 2012 at 12:53 PM · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged rhombus momo9, square card reader momo9, trrs momo9

TRRS jack

I have just confirmed that the 3.5mm headphone stereo jack is not a TRRS jack, which means that it will not support a headset that contains a microphone, nor will it support the answer call / end call button common to these headsets.  Although the Samsung Galaxy S2 does have a TRRS jack, and the apps below will work on that tablet, one of the results of running EyeOnComputer’s script on our Ployer momo9 (and clones), is reporting the device as the popular Samsung Galaxy S2  to Google Play, and consequently apps that require this port will report themselves as being compatible, but in fact they won’t function because the jack is just a stereo audio jack.  Among these apps are:

• Square Card Reader which allows you to accept credit cards and cash on your Android device. It’s only 2.75% per swipe for Visa, American Express, MasterCard and Discover. No contracts, monthly fees or merchant accounts.  The free Squareup magnetic stripe card reading dongle plugs into the TRRS jack and converts the credit card swipe into audio, which then allows the app to communicate to the credit card processor.  I saw the devices for sale at Walmart yesterday for $9.50, and when you create an account, you get $10 back.
• Rhombus which allows you to use the Squareup magnetic stripe card reading dongle to read any standard format magnetic stripe card . You can use it to see what information is on your credit cards, loyalty cards, driver’s license, and more. When a credit/debit card is scanned, it attempts to determine the issuer. Rhombus reads track 2 by default, but will read track 1 if the card is offset by a small shim (the author’s website shows a twist tie being used as a shim).   Rhombus does not have internet permissions, so it cannot send out any information about cards you may scan.  As an example, the author has adapted this app to read the age from a driver’s license and hopes to sell this to bars so that bouncers can verify the age of patrons.
• various other headset apps that require the 4 contacts common to the TRRS jack.

Improving battery performance

This is from a blog at TopNotchTablets that I discovered today…

Curious about how to take care of your tablet and make the battery keep most of it’s capacity for the longest amount of time?… here are some tips…

1. Don’t let the device fully discharge. If you can, try to only let it get down to as far as 30- 40% and then plug it in to charge…

2. Charge via the USB port more often. The slower charge (lower voltage) will take longer but if you are plugging it in overnight anyhow, why not? Also, don’t use anything that claims to be a “quick charger” or “fast charge” as they often employ an over-voltage technique to quickly charge the device. This can and will damage the battery over time if not immediately.

3. DO NOT, use your device with a 100% charge while being plugged in. This is one the quickest ways to kill your battery. Heat and keeping the battery at 100% all the time are very bad for Li-Ion batteries. Your device is portable, so stay unplugged until you hit that 20 – 30% mark.

Want more useful tips? I gleaned this stuff from here:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_…

Very interesting article. You could easily get 5 years of use out of your tablet versus 1 to 2 years by just doing a few simple things.

Cheers!

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