Category: gadgets

Categories
gadgets

S18 游泳和运动耳机和MP3 player

Reading Time: < 1 minute

几个月之前我把锻炼从走路换回到游泳。我在想是不是有游泳的耳机。最近在万能的朋友圈看到这个产品。我就下了单。今天第一次使用这个运动/游泳耳机🎧（MP3 player). 效果还马马虎虎吧。唯一小意外是这个桔红色耳塞掉了几次（我都找回来了[捂脸][呲牙]）。下次我还是会用原来的常规的耳塞。游泳时用这个MP3 player 的好处是在游泳池游泳不会是那么boring: 或者说有可能多游一点。这有点像跑步时听音乐一样。#运动耳机 #游泳耳机 #防水耳机 #MP3Player

亚马逊🔗：PSIER Bone Conduction Headphones…

充电🔋和充满电后的使用时间大概都是2个小时左右。Note it can be used as a regular MP3 player or a headset (with microphone, paring with your smartphone), during hiking or jogging. It will provide more situational awareness because the voice you hear is going through your bone instead of the ear directly. In other words you can heard your surroundings when you are outside. (Update 09-23-2025) Just came across a similar product at local Costco a few days ago. I think it may have better quality (because it’s sold in Costco 🙂

今天(2025-09-04)发现仰泳时这个耳机的效果最好。Do you want to guess why? (hint: my ears were always under water then).

Would you like to guess what (whose) music I put on the headset? 🙂

PS: you may find this post about JCC STL Swimming pool useful if you are also a J member. Personally I have been a J member since year 2012.

Categories
advice and tips gadgets Life Tips

Computer setup for family including teens, preteens

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I have a Mac Mini, and I owned it for quite a few years now. I bought it at Costco St. Peters store, at around Christmas 2021. I used to use it to get to Citrix via Citrix Workspace, the remote desktop software that I used for work. The main reason I prefer this over the company provided IGEL product is I like the keyboard and touchPad for my Mac Mini better than the IGEL’s. I no longer uses Citrix as my employer switched to another software for remote work, also they provided a company laptop for work.

But I still have the Mac Mini, and sometimes I like to see my kids use the Mac Mini, instead of the laptop. Because the Mac Mini (the desktop) is in a public location, and I know what they are doing there. My older daughter (15) has the MacBook Air too: and not surprisingly she would goof around much more – aka doing TikTok etc. compared to do real things at the desktop.

Other benefits of a desktop computer is a larger display or screen, and family members can work on something together, if/when applicable. This is similar to the good old days, when we work in office, we have desktop or large screen, we can do pair programming or debugging together.

If you have limited budget, and don’t have extra money for Mac Mini or something similar, I fully understand. And if you have an extra display, you can still connect the laptop to the external display, to take advantage of the real estate. In fact, I think I have one or two extra external displays, if you are in STL area and are interested, shoot me an email at minjie dot xu at gmail dot com, and you can pick it up at my home at Olivette (aka 橄榄村)。

Also, you may be interested in the computers I used for work.

Separately, I just bought a new iPad for myself. I hope to use iPad more often (instead of iPhone). This has been my goal, but previous effort (a Samsung Android tablet) has been fallen short.

Categories
gadgets

Bought MP3 player from Amazon

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This one – 64GB MP3 Player with Bluetooth 5.2, AiMoonsa Music Player with Built-in HD Speaker, FM Radio, Voice Recorder, HiFi Sound, E-Book, Earphones Included

First impression: this is more like a feature phone instead of iPad Nano or smartphone. For $27 (before tax), this is expected though.

I already started to use the MP3 player and I tested out radio feature (it works). I haven’t tried the earphone comes with it. Right now I am using Apple EarPods. It meets my basic need.

Note another reason I need the MP3 player is it has better or more powerful battery than my current iPod Nano – it still works, but I don’t know how long it will last – I owned it for about 12 or 13 years.

PS:

I am thinking that I probably still will get the iPod Nano from eBay or somewhere. Ideally an iPod with good battery. Separately I bought the USB C EarPods from Amazon and really liked it too. I gave my old USB C EarPods to S6 for her school work (she has a school iPad with USB-C port, and she uses the EarPods for Map testing etc.)

Update (07-03-2015) It seems the player will drag the voice of a song, similar to how cassette player works when it runs out of battery or power. I need to verify it’s indeed the case. Once again more than 10 year old iPod Nano seems doing a much better job than this latest and greatest MP3 player 🙂

(Update 02-21-2026) I bought a refurb iPod nano from eBay over the holidays, and I sold the MP3 player I mentioned above.

Separately, I came across this – Influencers want to adopt the ‘analog lifestyle’ for 2026. Here’s how to join them (LA Times). Below is quote from the article.

The recommendation has increased the search for “iPods” on EBay more than 1,200 times an hour globally between January and October 2025, according to the company. The iPod third-generation models saw a 50% increase in average sales price from global  EBay users in 2025 compared with 2023. The iPod Nano third generation saw a 60% increase, while the iPod Classic sixth generation had a 40% increase.

(Update 02-23-2026) Axios – Why people are buying iPods again

(Update 02-28-2026) The iPod’s slow shuffle back to relevance

Categories
gadgets

My AirPods Pro 1st Gen came back to life?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

(Update 06-30-2025) After a bit back and forth, the current status: the right AirPod has 18% battery, the left – zero. Will hang on for a bit (charing etc.) before finally ditching it to the local Apple Store 🙂

(Update 06-24-2025) It seems the battery didn’t last long. Out of battery after about 30 mins or so usage. I will continue monitoring.

(Orinigal 06-23-2025) 我用AirPods 和在eBay上卖一些小东西以来，可能最不可思议的一件事。Most incredible thing happened to my AirPods Pro 1st Gen, and in my 20 years eBay selling journey. Let me elaborate below.

Today I decided to try the “returned case” with the AirPods Pro 1st Gen that I left at home. First I charged the case and the AirPods. And then I used it with my iPhone 16, and it worked! My phone says “(my old daughter’s 1stst name)’s AirPods Pro”.

Are we talking about Headless chicken 🐓 or dead cat 🐈 bounce?

AirPods, top to bottom, Pro 1st gen, 3 and 4

Death Sentence

I sold the case via eBay in Apr 2025, as I cannot make the AirPods to work. So I thought the AirPods is already dead due to the age. I tried to charge the AirPods a few times, but it couldn’t connect to the phone after charing. Before all that we were visiting China (summer 2024), and I did recall sometimes my wife would take this away from her. And my wife may have left the AirPods Pro 1st Generation in her drawer for a long time. I am mildly annoyed by my wife policing our older daughter’s AirPods usage, if leaving it in her drawer accelerated the death, obviously I wasn’t happy, but probably at the same time I don’t want to fight my wife on this. There is this slogan: there are something in life money cannot buy; for everything else, there is MasterCard.

Now I think about it, perhaps leave it in the dust for a long time, may have helped the battery to come back to life? I know rechargeable batteries are not as predicable as the mechanical counterpart. Note I recycled my 1st AirPods at the Apple West County store. Since last year or 2, I am beefing up the eBay side business, and I was thinking maybe I can just sell the case because I assume the case is good.

You may refer to this post here Lost my AirPods Pro. Quoted below.

I paid $159.87 for Apple AirPods Pro (series number: SH36DK17G0C6L) at Amazon on November 25, 2020, and I just saw it’s $219.99 on Amazon now.

I am not sad. The AirPods pro is about 2 years old. Typical life span for AirPods is about 2 to 3 years. The pro has two advantage that my AirPods 3 doesn’t have: 1) It can connect to my old MacBook Pro (late 2012 model); 2) It has noise cancellation. For the latter I have this Anker SoundCore headset.

Customer Return

But the customer complained it didn’t work, after he received the item. Note I could not verify it end to end before ship it. Fortunately I asked for the case back this time. Nowadays normally I let customers keep the merchandise and I would still issue the refund. This time I was a bit curious regarding why the case didn’t work for the customer. Now I think it’s likely due to the fact I didn’t remove the AirPods from my Apple account or resetting the device. Again I am not 100% sure. I did google search, and I recall I removed the AirPods Pro 1st Generation from all my iOS and Mac devices.

Earlier I talked about AirPods Pro 1st gen here as well. Let me copy some stuff over:

1st Generation AirPods Pro: purchased Nov 25, 2020, on Amazon. Died and trying to sell the case on eBay now). Update 04-13-2025: sold the case on eBay.

Now at least I can use this pair of AirPods as the spare AirPods in my car: just like we have spare tire in the car, now we have spare AirPods too 🙂

Categories
gadgets

AirPods: revisited

Reading Time: 2 minutes

AirPods 3 about to die now?

It seems like it, as I noticed it started to drop connections a few times last few days (need to observe more to make sure). I recall my old 1st Gen AirPods does this a lot when it was near the end of its life. AirPods usually has 2 to 3 years of useful life, per refurb.me

I ordered it via Chase Ultimate Rewards on Nov 12, 2022. I spent15,643 Points (that’s $156.43 if we assume 100 points for 1 dollar, and this is after tax).

Assume I started using it right away, which was very likely, as I recall I got a bit tired of my then AirPods Pro gen 1. So basically, I already got 2.5 years of usage out of it.

AirPods I have owned personally

1st Generation AirPods (died and recycled at Apple store West County) – I probably bought it in year 2018. I was stunned by its seamless switching between iPhone and MacBook. I bought it after seeing a friend wearing it and he said it’s good. He didn’t lie 🙂 || I bought a similar one for my wife on Feb 16, 2020, at Amazon. Why are hers still working? Note I worn this thing quite a bit when I was working for the Mastercard, because a lot of times I don’t want to be disturbed (I sit at a corner cubicle), both for legit disturbance (people walking by or talking), or I just want peace. Later on I realized this is a hack I can deploy more because if I put on AirPods (even without listening to anything), sometimes people will assume I was on a call or listening to something, so that they won’t bother me.

1st Generation AirPods Pro: purchased Nov 25, 2020, on Amazon. Died and trying to sell the case on eBay now). Update 04-13-2025: sold the case on eBay.

2nd Generation AirPods Pro (current in use): bought at Costco U City store in year 2024.

AirPods 3 (seems about to die): as I said above, I bought it from the Chase Ultimate Rewards Apple store. || Update 04-10-2025: not sure about the “about to die” part, but it sometimes would act weird, basically the sound would be like the cassette player ran out of battery when I listened to a song on iPhone (YT Music). I used AirPods 3 for pairing with Windows Laptop too – while the integration between AirPods and Windows is not as smooth as the Mac, now I realized it has one advantage too. Let me explain, AirPods will switch between Mac and iPhone automatically, so for example, I was listening to music on iPhone, and I sit before the Mac Mini (my desktop), and open a browser and it has some video or audio playing, the AirPods would automatically switch – which was not my intension. This won’t happen (the automatic switching) between iPhone and Windows.

AirPods 4 (my 15-year-old has it): bought from Amazon on Dec 5, 2024.

Last but not least: please make sure turn on “Find My” for your AirPods: if you haven’t done so yet.

PS:

The AirPods are mostly made in Vietnam now. Apple may or may not raise the price of AirPods due to the new tariff (46%).

Categories
gadgets

Set Up Linksys Velop Mesh Home WiFi System

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 11-16-2025) Last few days I have encountered some intermittent issues on this Velop Wifi. And unplugging followed by plugging back in didn’t do the trick this time. So I did a reset, basically I factory reset every node to factory setting, and setup the Wifi network again. It seems now the WiFi is working as expected. A bonus point is this time I was able to add the 2nd child node successfully.

I also updated the firmware for one of the nodes. Now I feel like a network engineer 🙂

I also noticed that sometimes the LinkSys app will hang, and my workaround is to delete the app, and installed the app again. It seems did the trick. I did tried to close and re-open a few times. Sometimes that would work too. But “delete and re-install” did solve one hanging issue for me. I know it’s a bit extreme. Overall the app is not the best quality, let me add.

(Original 02-25-2025) I bought the system a while ago from Woot: it’s a refurbished product. Today I decided to set it up.

It’s done mostly via the Linksys app (iOS, android). I only have iOS so I can only comment on iOS: I think it’s good. It prompt me for the 1st node I just plugged in, and the node was also connected to the Internet (via the modem). Mainly I just tap and follow along.

The tricky part is add the 2nd node, my refurbished pack has 2 nodes total. Initially the app cannot find the child node (the 2nd node). Took me a while to realize I need to move this node closer to the parent node, and I did. After that I can see the 2nd node had the “Solid Purple” which means Node is ready for setup: and the rest is the history. Here are the explanations for the different colors.

After the successful pairing I can move the child node upstairs: and hopefully it can make the overall WiFi situation better at my home. Earlier I did try the “repeater mode” for my older Linksys WiFi router but it had some issues.

PS: I found out by default wordpress will use a very old timestamp for my post – it was year 2013 because I just reused it here. Then I updated it by just updating the timestamp.

PS (02-03-2025) I decided to get another Linksys VLP01 unit from eBay as I think it may improve the coverage when I work at front yard.

Categories
gadgets iOS

Bought and setup new iPad for my 10-year-old

Reading Time: 3 minutes

(Original 2025-01-27) Last week, my 10-year-old accidentally broke her old iPad (iPad gen 7th 32gb space gray). My 14-year-old said partial reason was the case was broken and didn’t provide enough projection. I was not upset about it, as this sort of thing is a part of life nowadays. The iPhone and iPad glasses are fragile, and they tend to break, if they land on hard surfaces. Our old daughter made a similar but slightly more costly mistake on my old iPhone XR about 14 months ago. That’s also how I got my new iPhone 15 shortly after, so that I can give my old iPhone 12 to her.

I did offer her (10-year-old) a new iPad recently as her current one is running out of space and cannot update to newer versions of iOS or iPad OS. That caused some issues such as she could not install certain apps 🙁

How we setup her new iPad (iPad 10th gen, we bought the pink one). Mainly we setup her own Apple account this time. In terms of new iPad setup, I used Mac Mini to transfer a backup copy of her old iPad to Mac Mini, then from Mac Mini I transferred that content to her new iPad. We used the USB cables in both instances (which is faster than Wi-Fi).

Setup her own Apple account took some time. It’s a child account and has less privilege than mine. Initially we tried to log into her new iPad, we were not successful. Took a few attempts. As her dad, I can see her account from my iCloud account.

After setting everything setup, I signed out from her new iPad (old iPad was using my iCloud account). And signed in using her own account. After that I need to authorize her to download couple apps or update them. Also, for Roblox, I believe the minimum age is 12, so I chose 12+ in the initial iPad setup. The rest are mostly default, such as Apple Pay (no credit card for now, which means she needs my attention to buy something).

Last but not least, I plan to bring the broken iPad in my upcoming China summer trip: hopefully I can find someone to fix it in a reasonable cost, and I plan to use it myself. It will be my 2nd personal iPad if it works out. Last summer I did bring back the broken iPhone XR and had it repaired, it worked only for a brief period, and I eventually did sell it on eBay – I explicitly listed the conditions and showed the pictures of the phone there. I may do it same if things don’t work out. At least, I don’t want to sell the broken iPad AS IS. (Update: actually I ended up selling the broken iPad as is, just like how I sold my broken iPhone). In both cases I erase everything from the device, and the buyer is likely going to use the device for the parts. Because although the screen is broken, the buyer can use other parts on the device as they are still good.

PS (02-07-2025) Today I learned how to Force Restart the iPad

Update (12-10-2025) I had to force restart my daughter’s school iPad (this time I refreshed my memory by watching this YouTube video). I suspect the hard case probably has something to do with the iPad being locked up like this. I recall last time (Feb 2025, refer to the above comment), the iPad was also in a hard case (it appears Google Gemini disagree with me on this).

“Locking Up” in Error If you mean the iPad becomes completely unresponsive or frozen, this is a technical issue and generally not a direct result of the case material itself (hard plastic or polycarbonate).”

Btw, I added some comments to the above YouTube video:

This is even better than Apple’s own instructions: which I followed but didn’t work. Note we just need to press (release) the volume down button, then press (release) the volume up button, at last hold the main button. Apple’s instructions led me to do an “extra” push and release – we just need a normal push and release on those 2 volume buttons.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance advice and tips gadgets

Cheaper iPhone deals

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’m talking about the unlocked iPhones. Because I don’t think the carrier promotions are “cheap” in the sense they usually make the money back from the monthly fees, and then more.

I can think of a few places, some are probably cheaper, but I am not 100% sure about the quality (especially the battery life for the refurbished iPhones). Below are the two places that I trust.

New iPhones at Apple, SE and 14 are two cheaper choices. Personally I think 15 or 16 are probably the better deals.

If one has the Chase sapphire or freedom credit cards and has some Ultimate Rewards (UR) points to spare, from time to time they have promotions for Apple products in the redemption center. It’s another way to get brand new iPhone. Note this may not be the most cost effective way to burn the UR points. But if they do promotion: it means 1 point is worth 1.25 cent during the redemption. If you travel, and could use the UR points, try to use the points there as 1 point is usually worth 2 cents or more there.

Personally I have used UR points for a few iPhones in last few years.

Refurbished

In the order of quality guarantee (top to bottom).

Refurbished iPhone at Apple: it seems they don’t have a lot of iPhones in stock now. Most are the larger or pro models (which are usually more expensive).

Other two places I am aware of refurbished iPhone: eBay and Amazon.

This somewhat reminds me of the preowned certified Toyotas I bought in year 2013 and year 2022.

Insurance

Do we need insurance? I usually insure it by myself (you may read this post if you have some time). Personally if I need insurance: I would buy from Apple instead of the carrier.

But this again reminds me of the one time I bought the “extended warranty” for my 2012 Toyota Sienna (preowned certified) from the dealer. Most of those are not necessary. In the case of iPhone, no pun intended, buy a good case from Amazon is probably the only insurance you need.

Comparing iPad Air and regular iPad – Update 01-04-2025

deals (dealsea iPad) – I end up bought the 11-inch iPad Air from Amazon. It should come in about 10 days and I plan to use it for Kindle, Apple Intelligence etc.

Reddit – iPad Air vs iPad

Google – iPad Air vs iPad

Apple – Compare iPad Models

Categories
gadgets Life Tips

Mobile phone carriers I have used in recent years and couple I am considering

Reading Time: 2 minutes

T-Mobile

I think I started using T-Mobile probably from year 2012, ever since my 2-year contract with AT&T ended. I got the 2-year contract when I bought iPhone 4 at the Apple Store in fall 2010.

H2O

Note with T-Mobile, I did not sign up the data plan. And In year 2014, I started looking at prepaid data plans (with some call minutes, and text messages included), and found H2O.

Mint Mobile

I don’t recall how exactly I found Mint Mobile, probably because I realized it’s cheaper than H2O. and I decided to switch. That was probably in year 2019. I don’t have complaints with them with 3 exceptions:

1. Their coverage which is about same as T-Mobile (in some areas the coverage is not as good as AT&T or Verizon), also because T-Mobile recently bought Mint Mobile, so I don’t expect them to improve.

2. In one or two occasions, it seems their meter went wrong, because essentially my data was quickly used up as soon as I received the new pot of data for the month. Tried to chat with the customer service via the app, and it was not very helpful either.

3. They don’t support Apple Watch Cellular. And it sounds like they won’t support it in the future either because this is a prepaid plan – they want their profit margin and so on.

International Roaming

They have launched this product called Minternational Pass. And I used it recently in my recent China trip (to be precise, Vancouver, Hong Kong and Mainland China). It’s working for the most part, the nice thing is it’s about $2 or $3 per day, which is much cheaper than the Visible Global Pass or Verizon international roaming (which is $10 a day; $5 day in Canada and Mexico). Note Mint Mobile recently included Canada roaming for free. So if we only talk about the international roaming, Mint Mobile is cheaper. But we also keep in mind the length of the international travel, as well as the country.

Apple Watch Cellular

I found the below 2 carriers when I was doing research for my Apple Watch cellular, and potentially for my 10-year standalone Apple Watch Cellular. I think I may switch myself from Mint Mobile to one of the two below, so that I can travel or go out with my watch only, from time to time.

Visible

I found this one from the Apple discussion forum thread. It sounds like they are the only prepaid carrier supports Apple Watch Cellular.

C Spire

It seems we have to buy Apple Watch from them (as opposed to Visible we can bring our own watch). They do have a nice section about kids using watch or phone (around safety etc.).

Last but not least, Apple Watch for Your Kids (Apple website).

Update 05-05-2025: I heard from a friend that US Cellular offers standalone Apple Watch Cellular plan. Note it was mentioned in the Apple Website above too.

Categories
China gadgets iOS iPhone app Life Life Tips Technology Travel Web

VPN software I have used personally

Reading Time: 3 minutes

This article can also be read on Medium. But this blog post has all the up to date information, while the medium.com article doesn’t get regular update.

Sometimes called 科学上网 in CHN

Mac:

VPN Prime – Unlimited Proxy 4+

Update early June 2025, the free plan appears stopped working in my most recent CHH trip.

Update June 12, 2025: I purchased the paid plan, and it works (again I found a sever that worked). Considering switching from the below iOS app to this Mac app for my VPN needs.

Update 06-13-25: sometimes the connection will get reset and get lost. In that case, I tried to connect to another server and it usually works.

Update 06-14-2025: I felt more confident using this app. I think this is a viable option if I need to work from CHN (right now my employer doesn’t allow that).

iPhone, iPad

VPN – Super Unlimited Proxy 4+ (Update June 2025, it still works, I have the premium sub now, and I know not all servers work, and I have my fav server now. Email me if you like to know 🙂

Update 06-12-2025: I noticed this app doesn’t always work flawlessly. At least in the two hotels I stayed, it didn’t like the Hotel WiFi. I don’t know how the app works exactly, but during the connection process, it seems dropping the WiFi and used the cellular data, which would cause the connection issue.

Update 06-17-2025: again, this app works flawlessly when I am in the US. Now I tend to think due to its popularity, China blocks this app’s use 🙁

(Original) Note: both apps have free versions, and both have add-ons that are available for purchase. I verified them on my trip and they work for the most part, iPhone app sometimes takes a few tries to get going. The Mac app works out of the box most of the time.

Cell phone international roaming

I know T-mobile used to have it. Mint Mobile has international pass too: 1 day, 3 day and 10 day. The device can go to outside world just like the VPN would. One may have to check her/his current cell phone carrier and see there is such a program or a pass.

Cell phone roaming has its own advantage, for example, we can order food or ride-share cars as those apps are usually available on the smart phone and they usually require internet connection. But in the case of China, ideally one may want to get a local phone number, as it’s needed by the meituan and didi chuxing apps.

Other use cases:

Netflix (shows from other country etc.)

Organizations sometimes block certain social media websites: this can happen in the western countries too.

Other software

Nord VPN: paid. It takes some effort to get it working in CHN. It seems all the default servers are blocked. Had to open a ticket to get alternative server names (ip address etc.), try and error, to got it working in year 2023. Retrieved a list during most recent trip too (summer 2024), haven’t tried it out as I found the two solutions above are good enough.

Default setting for Nord VPN is working when in the USA. That’s true for the free versions for two apps above too.

(Update 01/03/2025) I found this bug a while back, the issue was when my phone is on the Mobile Data network (not Wi-Fi), and when the VPN was on via Wi-Fi before the cut over, it seems Nord VPN has difficulty connect to VPN. Took me a while to understand why I lost internet connection. I am ditching this app (and software) now – not solely because of this. It’s just another annoying thing or bug for me. I noticed it didn’t work out of box on the public K-12 school’s public Wi-Fi – had to use VPN – Super Unlimited Proxy 4+ (the free version: I may consider support them later once my Nord VPN subscription expires).

(Original post July 2024) Open VPN (I set it up on my own $DGCN server), but it stopped working for me in CHN in my 2023 trip. Bought Nord VPN in that trip too. Refer to this Chinese article if you want to learn more about OpenVPN or setup your own OpenVPN server (note it still works outside CHN’s GFW).

PS: you may want to take a look at eSIM app for travel.

我用VPN主要是因为我的personal email 是GMail，还有我有时会听YT/YT Music上面的歌。下面是谷歌中文翻译。

======

这篇文章也可以在 Medium 上阅读。但这篇博文包含所有最新信息，而 medium.com 上的文章则没有定期更新。

中文有时称为“科学上网”，或者叫梯子：可能是从“翻墙”那里衍生出来的。

Mac：

VPN Prime – 无限代理 4+

更新于 2025 年 6 月初，免费套餐似乎在我最近的一次 CHN 之旅中停止了工作。

更新于 2025 年 6 月 12 日：我购买了付费套餐，现在可以使用了（我又找到了一个可以正常工作的服务器）。我考虑从下面的 iOS 应用切换到这个 Mac 应用来满足我的 VPN 需求。

更新于 2025 年 6 月 13 日：有时连接会被重置并丢失。在这种情况下，我尝试连接到其他服务器，通常情况下可以正常工作。

iPhone、iPad

VPN – 超级无限代理 4+（更新至 2025 年 6 月，它仍然有效，我现在有付费订阅，我知道并非所有服务器都能正常工作，而且我现在有我最喜欢的服务器了。如果你想知道，请给我发邮件

更新于 2015 年 6 月 12 日：我注意到这个应用程序并不总是完美无缺。至少在我住过的两家酒店，它不如酒店的 WiFi 好用。我不知道这个应用程序的具体工作原理，但在连接过程中，它似乎会断开 WiFi 并使用蜂窝数据，这会导致连接问题。

（原文）注意：这两个应用程序都有免费版本，并且都有可购买的附加组件。我在旅途中验证了它们，它们大部分时间都可以正常工作，iPhone 应用程序有时需要尝试几次才能启动。Mac 应用程序大多数时候开箱即用。

手机国际漫游

我知道 T-mobile 以前有这个功能。Mint Mobile 也有国际漫游通行证：1 天、3 天和10天。该设备可以像VPN一样连接到外部网络。用户可能需要检查当前的手机运营商，看看是否有这样的程序或通行证。

手机漫游有其自身的优势，例如，我们可以订餐或叫车，因为这些应用程序通常在智能手机上可用，并且通常需要网络连接。但在中国，理想情况下，用户可能需要获取一个本地电话号码，因为美团和滴滴出行等应用程序需要这些号码。

其他用例：

Netflix（其他国家的节目等）

一些组织有时会屏蔽某些社交媒体网站：这种情况在西方国家也可能发生。

其他软件

Nord VPN：付费。在中国使用需要一些时间。似乎所有默认服务器都被屏蔽了。不得不提交工单获取备用服务器名称（IP地址等），反复尝试，最终在2023年成功恢复。在最近的一次旅行中（夏季）也获取了一份列表。 2024），我还没试过，因为我觉得上面两个方案已经够用了。

Nord VPN 在美国默认设置下可以正常工作。上面两个应用的免费版本也一样。

（更新于 2025 年 3 月 1 日）我之前发现了这个 bug，问题出在当我的手机连接移动数据网络（而非 Wi-Fi）时，如果在切换之前 VPN 是通过 Wi-Fi 开启的，Nord VPN 似乎很难连接到 VPN。我花了一段时间才明白为什么我断网了。我现在正在放弃这个应用（和软件），不仅仅是因为这个。这只是另一个让我恼火的问题或 bug。我注意到它在公立 K-12 学校的公共 Wi-Fi 上无法开箱即用——不得不使用 VPN——Super Unlimited Proxy 4+（免费版：等我的 Nord VPN 订阅到期后，我可能会考虑支持他们）。

（原帖）Open VPN（我在自己的 $DGCN 上设置了它）服务器），但在我2023年的中国之行中，它失效了。那次旅行我也买了Nord VPN。如果你想了解更多关于OpenVPN的信息，或者搭建你自己的OpenVPN服务器（注意，它在中国的GFW之外仍然可以使用），请参阅这篇中文文章。