iandouglas.com » android

Is this another Gingerbread bug?

ian douglas — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 06:33:31 +0000

Tonight, I installed Google Books for the fourth time on my Samsung Nexus S. I've never manually uninstalled it. In fact, whenever I see that there's an update for it available, I go to my app dock and sure enough, I see it listed as an installed app, I can open it and continue to read a free Sherlock Holmes novel where I last left off.

Is this another bug in Gingerbread, or is it a fault with Google Books?

New Android Market client finally pushing to the Nexus S

ian douglas — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 02:21:40 +0000

Android Central reported tonight that the Nexus S was getting the new fancy Android App Market client. I've tried a *#*#checkin#*#* and several reboots, and I got nuthin'. Thank for getting my hopes up, guys.

I've had the new market on my Nexus One for a little while now, and frankly, it's not earth shattering by any means. Yeah, it's nice to look at, it's got a cleaner design to it, perhaps less "industrial" looking, but all in all, it still functions the same. Some of Android Central's users claim it runs slower on their devices, but I haven't noticed any speed difference on my Nexus One.

Apple iOS 3 and 4 VS Android 2.1 and 2.2

ian douglas — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:51:51 +0000

When Apple announced the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 at WWDC this week, Chris D and I immediately went to work to cover the major features of Android 2.0/2.1 and Android 2.2 coming out (hopefully this month?), against iOS 4 and its predecessor iOS 3. You can read the full article here: http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/06/10/apple-ios-3-4-vs-android-2-1-eclair-2-2-froyo-fight/

New Froyo features announced at Google IO

ian douglas — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:40:07 +0000

Besides giving away an HTC EVO 4G to all attendees, here’s the big news announced about Android 2.2 Froyo at Google IO today:

Features Announced At Google IO

Just-in-Time compiler confirmed
Microsoft Exchange integration including auto-discovery and remote wipe
New services just as data backup APIs for carriers to move your data from one device to another
Tethering announced for Wifi and USB, shown in demo, pokes fun at iPad; no word on whether carriers can disable it
2x-3x performance boost in the Browser, new Javascript engine is SO much faster
Optimizations for using the camera, orientation (accelerometers) within the browser
Speech control and recognition is so much smoother, including Mandarin and Japanese, including speech recognition to make phone calls
Real-time language translation
Announced support for Flash Player 10.1 Public Beta and AIR developer pre-release, showed Flash working on Nickelodeon
New ways to work with apps:
- Finding new apps (app search)
- Searching data within apps (showed Mint.com app search)
- Installing to SD memory with a “Move to SD card” button within the Application Info screen, demoed Need for Speed game
- Update All and Auto-Update confirmed
- Bug reporting, can view stack trace online
Sneak peak of new Android Marketplace, because demo user is logged in, you can view your installed apps and over-the-air app sync
New Marketplace feature: over-the-air music sync
Sync your Android device with your iTunes library to live-stream your music to your device

T-Mobile Seems Unsure of Position on Tethering Fees

ian douglas — Thu, 13 May 2010 23:13:56 +0000

TechCrunch Posts about Tethering

TechCrunch reports that Android 2.2 (Froyo) will support USB and Wifi tethering, though it remains to be seen whether carriers will have an option to disable this feature. TechCrunch leaked some information about availability of tethering within Froyo, and dozens of other sites picked it up, not to mention countless tweets about it. It made some serious headlines, and has had a lot of feedback from users hoping to get a 2.2 upgrade to their Android device when they haven’t even had a 2.1 upgrade yet. All I can say to them is good luck.

What is T-Mobile’s Position, Though?

Shortly after getting my own Nexus One in February, our office Internet connection went down, I had the opportunity to try some of the thirt-party tethering apps in the Android Market, such as PDANet and EasyTether. Having successfully installed PDANet, plugging in my Nexus One via USB and getting the client running on my MacBook, and sharing my MacBook’s new Internet connection with my coworkers, I sent a quick tweet about my successful trial:

Three minutes later, T-Mobile sent a reply tweet:

Early Morning Tethering

Early on a Friday morning mid-March, I awoke to find our home WiFi on the blink. This time, I used EasyTether with my M17x running Windows 7 Ultimate, and sent another tweet about being able to get online:

Within 5 minutes, another reply from T-Mobile:

And, Now That Froyo is Announced …?

After reading the TechCrunch article, and several others about Sprint wanting to charge extra for the EVO “experience”, I decided to ping T-Mobile again about tethering, but this time asking whether they’ll charge us extra for it:

This time, T-Mobile took almost two hours to reply:

What’s the Verdict?

I guess we’ll have to wait for the Froyo announcement from Google, and then a follow-up announcement from T-Mobile, as to whether they’ll let the Nexus One have an untouched 2.2 build, or whether T-Mobile will tweak the software to disable USB/WiFi tethering and/or charge its users more per month. It’s already been announced that T-Mobile will slow down our cell network bandwidth once we’ve transferred 5GB/month, but so far they’ve been very cool about allowing tethering on their network — via third-party apps that users are unlikely to run for extended periods of time. AT&T has allowed tethering on certain devices if you pay a premium monthly data plan price ($60/month), Verizon charges extra for USB tethering, and WiFi tethering on their Palm Pre Plus devices, and Sprint has announced they will charge extra for the EVO’s data plan which, coincidentally, allows tethering — is that Sprint’s way of charging for WiFi tethering?

If I were King for a day

If I were T-Mobile, I’d leave tethering alone on Froyo, let the users have access to it, continue to slow our bandwidth after 5GB, and use that as a serious advantage against the other 3 major carriers. It would bring in lots of additional customers, especially road warriors, and would most definitely increase their brand popularity.

Rumor has it of course that the Nexus One will get the first roll-out of Froyo, so it remains to be seen how T-Mobile will handle themselves with this new OS build. Personally, I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the Nexus One when Froyo is announced.

Android 2.2 Froyo Benchmarking

ian douglas — Wed, 12 May 2010 02:30:43 +0000

Now With More Speed

Over lunch today, I did some benchmarking with Linpack on my own Nexus One, using a stock Android 2.1 build, and the Nexus One provided by Adobe. It was astonishing to see the difference in MFLOPS (Millions of FLOating-Point operations per Second), essentially a high-precision mathematics sequencing instruction set that tests how quickly a CPU can run a known number of calculations. Since Linpack themselves publish a benchmark Top 10 for Android devices, I’m not disclosing anything that hasn’t already been publicly confirmed by others.

Dare to Compare

The stock Nexus One with Android 2.1 averages in the high 6.9 to low 7.0 range for MFLOPS, but the Nexus One running the Debug release of Android 2.2 (aka FroYo, “frozen yogurt”) can apparently achieve a score of up to 40 MFLOPS. My own testing confirms it at a high-36 to mid-37 range:

How it’s Done

Google has already confirmed that a new JIT (just-in-time) Java compiler will be in Android 2.2, but I don’t pretend to know how the Java virtual machine works or how JIT would improve it. Rumor has it that Android 2.2 will be announced at Google IO next week, so hang tight!

Update, May 12 10am PST

As specified above, I don’t know whether this is JIT in action. I can’t confirm or deny that JIT is part of the Froyo release. The Nexus One provided to my employer has a developer release of Froyo on it, but I’m not allowed to disclose the features of the OS — but if this stuff makes it into the official release WHOA BABY.

Update, May 20, 9am PST

Google announced at Google IO that Froyo does indeed have the new Just-In-Time compiler.

HTC Droid Incredible replaces Nexus One at Verizon

ian douglas — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:08:36 +0000

It’s no surprise that Verizon is no longer going to be supporting the Nexus One now that HTC has released the Droid Incredible. Some speculate that the “Incredible” is only a mildly upgraded Nexus One, but a side-by-side comparison of their specs shows only two dramatic differences. The new device sports 8GB of internal ROM storage (up from 512MB on the Nexus One), and boasts an 8-megapixel camera (the Nexus One has a 5-megapixel camera). The screens share the same dimensions (480×800 at 252 dpi at a 3.7″ diagonal), though the Nexus One appears to be the better-quality AMOLED variety where the “Incredible” only has an OLED screen. However, the bigger camera and larger internal ROM come at a cost: 26% fewer minutes of talk time (312 minutes vs. Nexus One’s 420 minutes), and 42% fewer standby hours (146 hours versus the Nexus One’s 250 hours). The battery life alone may make this a deal breaker for some.

For as quickly as the HTC Incredible came to market, there are already some HTC Incredible Accessories shops popping up online. You may well want to check out some of the Droid Incredible Cases available, or at the very least a Droid Incredible Screen Protector to protect against scratching. I’m always paranoid about scratching the screen of my Nexus, but I do protect the device with a silicon case.

Is the “Incredible” a Nexus One “killer”? Verizon seems to think so, since they’ve pulled their support for the Nexus One at Google’s phone ordering page. Personally, I think it’s a bit arrogant to use an attention-seeking adjective to name the phone. What will be their next phone? The “Stupendous”? The “Ridiculous”? The “Ginormous“?

If I were up for a contract renewal or wanted to change carriers, I would pass on the HTC Droid Incredible. I multitask quite a bit with my Nexus One and already drain the battery every day — I even purchased a second battery for emergency use — so I can’t imagine having significantly less battery life on the new HTC device. That, and given that Verizon’s network is yet incapable of letting you talk on the phone and use the Internet on the device simultaneously, I would wait until their network expansion is complete before considering this phone. However, if you’re locked into Verizon and looking to pick up an Android-based device, the HTC Droid Incredible does have some significant advantages over the Motorola Droid like nearly double the processor speed, an FM radio, and 802.11n wireless.

Disclosure: this blog post was sponsored by talkietech.com, but all opinions are my own.

Dropbox client for Android, beta review

ian douglas — Mon, 03 May 2010 03:55:01 +0000

Thanks again to AndroidPolice.com for publishing a piece I wrote, detailing the v0.9 beta client that Dropbox developed for the Android platform. They’ve brought me on as a “contributor” to their site, and feels a lot like what I used to do for the Blackjack 2 sit I ran a few years ago.

Nexus One, Motorola CLIQ reviews

ian douglas — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:05:16 +0000

My wife and I recently switched from AT&T to T-Mobile and we picked up some new Android-based devices. For me, the Nexus One; for her, the Motorola CLIQ. Both phones have a lot of really great features, most of which are Android-related. But each device has a handy set of features that made them good decisions for us. Her Pantech phone was ruined by our son dropping it in the dog’s water dish, and I just got tired of the closed mindset of the iPhone. That, and our monthly cell phone bill is cheaper with T-Mobile.

For me, the flexibility of a multi-tasking phone with a fast processor, decent screen resolution, and the new Android 2.1 feature set. For my wife, the superb MOTOBLUR tool on the CLIQ (running Android 1.5 or 1.6, I forget) gives her a means to combine all of her social/texting/facebook/etc feeds into a single experience. She’ll get an Android 2.1 upgrade in the near future, according to Motorola, which will give her even more voice commands.

Another nice feature is that both phones sport a micro USB connector for charging — for the first time ever in our marriage, we have similar phone charging needs. Using a $5 coupon for newegg.com, I ordered two more three-foot micro USB cables for $2.99 each, so we’ll have enough cables for our laptops, desktop PC, etc. Next purchase will likely be a two-port USB charger for the car so we can keep both phones charged on road trips.

Our experience with the Android Market has been pretty nice. I’ve found myself looking over her phone to see which apps she’s found, and she’s found some great apps and widgets. She found some text-to-speech tools, and is looking for a decent voice recording app. I found Android versions of the iPhone apps I used the most: Bump, Pandora, last.fm, Dropbox (Droidbox), a mobile Bible, Stitcher, Shazam, Instamapper, Flixster, and a Starbucks Card manager. Sadly my Starbucks Gold card has been so overused the card’s numbers have worn off.

We’re both spoiled with the voice search tools, and yesterday I transferred our family calendar into a shared Google Calendar so our phones will update with appointments, etc., so we both have a better handle on who’s where and when. No more “I’ll have to check the calendar when I get home…”

Overall, it’s really nice to finally have a decent multitasking phone, not a uni-task setup like previous Nokia/WinMo/Pantech/Samsung models or the iPhone. Finally, I can stream Pandora music, use turn-by-turn directions, while constantly updating my location on Google Latitude all on one device.

There are a few key differences in our phones, but they share many commonalities thanks to the Android OS. The Nexus One is a touch screen device only, whereas the Motorola CLIQ has a slider keyboard (which isn’t always needed, but my wife needs the physical keyboard. Both have a 5 megapixel camera, and I think the CLIQ’s cpu runs about 600MHz to the Nexus 1GHz speed. They both have similar RAM/ROM sizes, and I may upgrade her microSD memory to a 16GB card for her birthday (shh!)

Moving to a new platform wasn’t without its hiccups of course.

We had difficulty getting her old contacts from her AT&T SIM to her CLIQ. Ultimately, we put the SIM in an old Samsung Blackjack II, sync’d it with Outlook, used a third-party tool to sync Outlook to Gmail, then had to set those Gmail contacts to family/friends labels, at which point the CLIQ sync’d them over the air (OTA). What an ordeal.

We also had to figure out how to get the camera gallery to send photos to Facebook on the CLIQ. While MOTOBLUR has Facebook integration (it only does status and contact sync’ing), the CLIQ doesn’t include the full Android app for Facebook; simply installing the app immediately gave us an option to ‘share’ a photo with Facebook. The CLIQ also came preconfigured to show weather in New York, which we really only need to know to tease a SoCal friend who recently moved to the frosty NYC area, and it wasn’t completely intuitive how to fix that. There were some other minor things she asked me to handle for her.

On the Nexus One, my only pain point was getting my productivity apps installed as soon as possible, and that T-Mobile took nearly two days to get the data plan working on my phone so I didn’t have to rely on wifi. Nowhere was it documented that I needed to remove my battery to cold-boot my phone.

Now it’s time to learn some Java so I can tinker with some app building of my own. Now that I have a commute to work, I may revisit my old w98podfetch application and build a nice UI for it. There are a handful of podcast downloaders for Android, but I see a lot of comments about how there are too many limitations.

Total Cost of Ownership: iPhone, Nexus One, Palm Pre, Droid and others

ian douglas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:11:24 +0000

The folks over at BillShrink started a thread a little while back which they revisited when the Google Nexus One was released in early January 2010, and wrote up a nice comparison chart of the different phones’ capabilities, and costs. While they have tried to keep it up to date, lots of users have left comments on their site about price plans, requesting extra features on the chart, etc.

In a quest last night to find a cheaper alternative to giving AT&T $180 of my hard-earned cash every month for our two cell phones, I decided to take a page from BillShrink, and include some of the other phones that their users were requesting, along with additional phone features.

I’ll add more to the list as I have time, but this was my evening project last night. It’s ugly, it’s not written well, but it gets the point across. I’ll work on the overall look of it if enough people find it useful. Specs were gathered from several sites including the carriers, the phone manufacturers, a site called “pdadb” and a few items from the BillShrink chart.

http://iandouglas.com/cellphones.php

My chart will let you view specs from a single phone in the list, or multiple phones side-by-side so you can see their capabilities. I thought it would be interesting to list screen resolutions and DPI (calculated from the diagonal size), internal vs external storage, USB connector types, and more details about what the minimum/maximum carrier plans would include for the money you’ll pay for the phone over two years of ownership.