91–100 of 108 posts
I've been a member of ZipCar for well over a decade, from when they first came to London and issued the plastic NFC cards. Then it was the smaller ones that could attach to a keyring, and for the past 5 or so years - just the mobile app. This is very anecdotal, but I never really had any issues - even more so, the last ZipCar hire I did took me from downtown SF to the Muir Woods (no cell reception at all). I had no i…
Zipcar sent me a "zipcard" (a credit card sized card with an RFID chip) that I keep in my wallet. I find app unlock to be convenient but it doesn't work everywhere.
I generally find using an app to unlock a car less convenient than a key. I think the use cases where the reverse seems true are pretty subjective at best. Or maybe I just grew up before cell phones ruled the world...
I worry when this is an issue for all cars. I think I'm going to buy an old series Land Rover and electric convert it myself if that happens.
This is only an issue for a few kinds of rental vehicles, and I doubt that will be the case for much longer. Teslas work just fine when out of cell range, as they unlock using your phone's bluetooth or an NFC card. If the car is in cell range, you can lock/unlock it remotely using an app on your phone.
We downloaded some shows from netflix before we went off grid so we would have something to watch in case there was some down time. Sure enough, we couldn't watch them. The netflix app needed to phone home before it would allow us to see them.
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How was this ever allowed? This sounds like litigation central. How you can rent cars that will brick themselves in tunnels, valleys, and in the country? Do cell phones even work in most parking buildings?
> Do cell phones even work in most parking buildings? This is why Zipcar issues a card for unlocking the car. I'm not sure why the people in the article didn't have one.
The next morning, the family tried to leave for sightseeing, but Mr. McCarthy couldn’t unlock the car with his app or RFID card.
From TFA.
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builtin storage is tiny (typically 128 or 256 GB) to force people into keeping all their data in the cloud, which doesn't help you when you're offline.
On Android, you can usually plug flash drives into the phone's USB port (either USB-C drives or using the correct dongles/adapters). They might insist you format them first so make sure you start by plugging them in and formatting on the phone before adding media. I think there's some apps that can read, for instance, NTFS (although I remember it being a little flakey)
This allows storage, peripherals (wired headphones!) to connect to the USB-C port:
https://www.minitool.com/news/what-is-otg.html>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go>
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builtin storage is tiny (typically 128 or 256 GB) to force people into keeping all their data in the cloud, which doesn't help you when you're offline.
On Android, you can usually plug flash drives into the phone's USB port (either USB-C drives or using the correct dongles/adapters). They might insist you format them first so make sure you start by plugging them in and formatting on the phone before adding media. I think there's some apps that can read, for instance, NTFS (although I remember it being a little flakey)
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Isn’t the stereotypical use case for zip car to take it on a weekend trip out of town where public transit doesn’t go? National parks are very popular recreational attractions. Not to mention, there are plenty of places in cities without cell service, like parking garages.
Or recently Telus, one of the big 3 Canadian COM companies, went down for a whole day. Imagine cars stopping to work because of that.
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VLC is available for both flavors of phone/tablet, you don't need an SD card, builtin storage is fine.
builtin storage is tiny (typically 128 or 256 GB) to force people into keeping all their data in the cloud, which doesn't help you when you're offline.
If the tiny built in storage is to "force people" to do things, what are the models with lots of storage for?
Or, if that's your thing, feel free to cheap out on the phone and make up for it with a microSD card, that's why they still sell those models. I'm sure it'll get lots of security updates too, right?
Point being VLC doesn't care whether your phone has a headphone jack. Sorry, I meant SD slot.