Just disabled work e-mail on the phone. IT requires a passcode, and Android's interpretation of this requirement causes it to always present the full keyboard to type out a 4 digit PIN I set. Unlocking the phone has been very annoying over the past day and a half.

Battery icon is now flashing, and the phone has warned me it's about to die twice. A little under 12 hours off the charger and it's about dead. I'm going to let it shut off this time before charging, just to make sure it's not some weird calibration issue.

I was drooling over the Droid when it came out last year. Nearly got it, but decided to wait until they fixed the issue with hands-free dialing via bluetooth.
Froyo has the fix!
Now I have to choose between Droid, Droid X, and Droid 2.
I'm leaning toward Droid 2.

Hopefully Seido comes up with some nice Droid 2 accessories quickly.

I don't think you'll have the Droid as an option for much longer. I think they won't be selling it any more...

Tom, I'm not sure what to say about the battery issue. I don't really have an issue with it. On an average day with a good deal of work, I'll have two or three support calls, and during such a day:

- I'll listen to podcasts in the car in-between clients
- I keep the WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS on at all times
- I check email on it constantly
- I write constant email reminders
- when waiting in line or something, I'll play a game of Air Control
- I browse the web or use IMDb for tidbits of info
- whatever other stuff I do with my smartphone that I can't even remember

I consider that to be pretty heavy use of the phone. On some days of use like this, I have to charge the phone when I get home. That's no problem for me, as we have micro USB chargers in three places in our home to charge my phone, my wife's work Blackberry, and her Kindle.

But most days, it's just enough to get me through, and I don't have a problem with that. These phones are doing a whole lot, so I don't expect any of them to last that long.

Besides, didn't you connect your iPhone to your computer when you got home to sync your podcast positions?

Yep. And with the iPhone 4, I was usually at 50-60% battery life left, at a time when this phone was yelling at me because it was below 10% when I got home. I was very impressed with how the iPhone 4 battery held up during my trip to the pacific northwest, even with heavy camera use.

It's unfortunate that your transition to Android is a little rocky. Funny, I pegged you as a non-iPhone kind of guy.

I chose pure Android and got the Moto Droid. I compared it to the Incredible and hated the HTC Sense modifications. However, once I got my sister on the Incredible, I learned to appreciate Sense.

HTC added some very cool features to Android:
- Seeing the call log for an individual contact
- "Quick contact" buttons to choose how to contact the person
- Better text selection, copy, and paste than stock

Incredible's home screens and "card view" is its biggest feature. This promotes the use of widgets for customizable quick access to your information without launching apps. It's an order of magnitude better with Themes, letting you choose between different sets of home screens. This gives you MULTIPLE sets of seven home screens; one set for each activity you may be doing (work, travel, relaxing, home, etc).

My final word on handset manufacturers modifying Android: Approach each phone as a unique product, that's the manufacturers intention. Remember, the majority of users don't know "pure Android" and simply take theirs at face value. Just let it grow on you.

But even with all that, I ditched Android for the Palm Pre Plus. Best hardware keyboard layout of any smartphone ever. Wifi tethering is better than iPhone 4 bluetooth and FREE. Multitasking and the UI in general has a usable flow that I really appreciate. A great replacement for my Treo.

Enjoy your Android.

Matt has been working with me over IM, and now we are both a little puzzled. It seems my phone is doing things that shouldn't be possible till 2.2, like exchange calendar support. Also, the HTML e-mail that gave the phone problems looks fine if I send it to my IMAP account, and I also sent one to Matt to a POP account on his 2.2 phone. So for some reason, it's only busted when looking at it via my exchange account. Possible more Samsung or AT&T foolery under the hood here.


I have changed a bit over the years, leaning more towards tech products and software that work well and have a high level of polish. I attribute it to two things, one my initial adoption of OS X for computing at home and work, and now also my job focus. I am in a position now that has me considering end user use of products a lot. End users either being actual paying customers of the games I work on, or also coworkers in other disciplines like art or production. The easier things are for them, the easier my job is, as I'm not being bugged with support questions as much. In this transition, I'm much less interested about under the hood things about how it works, and have lost a lot of my tinkering spirit. It's still been somewhat jarring to see things like "com.google.maps" and such sprinkled all over the place in the user interface of Android. It's a very techie thing to show and expose.

As a specific curiosity, where are you seeing "com.google.maps?"

It shouldn't and doesn't show that normally. If it does then there is a problem with the firmware build for that phone/version.

It shows up for a brief moment when in Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications. It does resolve to show the normal name and icon usually pretty quickly, though it's there long enough for me to make it out.

The full names do show in "Running services" under process too. That whole screen just is a nightmare for a non techie, and even someone like myself is a bit confused at first when entering it. Whats an SnSService, should I tap to stop it? What about OmaDrmConfigService?

I think I should just drop the whole trying to evaluate the phone as a typical consumer, as I'm pretty much determined I'd never recommend one to a non techie at this point. Even ignoring the Samsung or AT&T specifics, it's just not an experience I can see people being satisfied with. It is very much a built by engineers for engineers platform, at least from my experiences so far. I want to try and give the platform an honest chance, and may consider trying to get to just a "pure" Android experience somehow, but so far the flaws and unpolished areas are definitely overshadowing anything that might be nice here.

I wanted to say I saw the full names in the Marketplace too, but now I can't find it. I did however spot an oddity, one app priced at UK£1.99. Does the marketplace not translate into the local currency? I'm seeing that app alongside another reporting US$1.99.

No, the currency doesn't convert. It is a little annoying, but I think it's an aesthetic thing. I think they don't want someone saying "why is this app here 99 cents, and this other one is $1.54? That's a weird number!

Tom, I do think much of what you're seeing is Samsung screwups. That's not an excuse for that phone at all, though, and I fully admit that. The stuff you mention about what's exposed to the user doesn't worry me either. You have to dig a little deep to get to that, don't you? I don't know why a regular user would care about that stuff or even find their way there. And even if they did, I don't think they can screw their phone up with it...

You can use the long name (in Android parlance, "name" or "package" vs. "label") to search for a particular application, and is often used in links to applications. You may have noticed it in that context.

For whatever reason, the app prices are not localized to the buyer. One would assume that it is before you pay, but I've never bought a foreign-ly priced app.

Ah okay. That does happen on other Android devices. It'll show you every package installed on that screen including system ones which you can't remove or alter. It is a bit strange to expose that to the end users though.

The end user app screen is within the Market app. That shows only items that you've installed yourself. Only with the Market though unfortunately. If you've manually installed something then you need to trawl through the app list in settings to find it again.


Not sure what screen you're talking about here.


As others have pointed out, the reversed domain IDs are what each individual app is identified by. Similar to the system used in Java I guess.


It displays whatever the developers currency is bizarrely. Not sure why it does that since it doesn't make much sense.

IMO Android 2.0 should have been 1.0 and even now in 2.2 there are some rough edges which need to be fixed. I'm okay with the platform and I use an Android handset as my phone still.

Similar to? It is the system used in Java. Those are the Java class names of the applications...

Peter

Yeah, I did the same (on my HTC Desire), because of that requirement. Since I don't particularly care about work email, but I do care about my calendar, I just use Google Calendar Sync running on my desktop at work to push my calendar up to Google Apps and I pull it down from there.

Matt pointed me to something last night showing off 2.2 features, and one is a simple passcode entry screen for the exchange lock. I'll probably turn it back on once 2.2 comes out, as tapping out a 4 digit PIN on a large T9 entry screen isn't that bad.

I haven't used the visual password lock on mine, since it seems a bit too easy to crack. I managed to unlock 2 devices at work a while back, with the owners somewhat puzzled at first. All I did was tilt the device sideways slightly and look for the clear smudge trail tracing out a pattern. With the passcode, the taps blend in with the frequent taps used to operate the device.

Oh, update on the alarm, it's been working fine for snooze now. Maybe the first time I pressed stop accidentally, as I am quite blind without my glasses on. I'm not fully willing to trust it since the buttons are so close. With the Chumby or iPhone, snooze functions are much easier to hit then the turn off alarm, so my half awake self usually doesn't defeat them so easily.

Attached is the mail view I get on my phone, with the blue bar being the useless IMAP folder selector I was pointing out earlier. Any ideas if this is actually an Android mail client, or some Samsung creation? (Managed to find a screenshot function, using an iPhone camera :-)

Are those the checkboxes you were talking about ? I can't tell whether they are checked, unchecked or disabled ?

Well. I wasn't 100% sure whether it is just similar to or atcually is the same as the Java system because Google seem to like doing their own thing with Android e.g. Dalvik.

Yep, those would be the ones. In that screenshot, all were unchecked. Checking one turns the entire box green and the checkmark white. In other places, sometimes only the checkbox changes. It varies by app, with the Gowalla one being the worst place for them. On a light background, they are even more deceptive. Add in some bad lighting situations like bright sun, and it's near impossible to tell at a glance what state they are in.

Weird, if I had had to guess (without context) I'd have said they were checked but disabled. Very strange design for the unchecked state to show a tick.

It's a feature. Eclectic UI design.

It's one menu option away from where users have to go to uninstall apps. Odds are, most people will poke their head in at some point if they see it near a section they use frequently. Oh, that reminds me, another deceptive thing about the Samsung interface (and maybe pure Android) is how to uninstall apps. If I press and hold on an icon, a trash can appears at the bottom. It seems that is how you remove icons off the main screens, but oddly it shows up when in the full application launcher too. Dragging to the icon makes it turn red, and does nothing when you drag an app there.

Until you pointed that out, I had no idea I could remove apps from the Market app. Market -> Menu button -> Downloads -> Click an app -> Uninstall seems like a buried place to put it, especially since no text leading up to the final button indicates uninstall.

Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications (complete with text about manage and remove installed apps) is what I came across first. And none of the built in apps show up in either place. I'm still stuck with my crapware.

Also had my first experience with Flash. I clicked a link in my Twitter feed that went to a video player indicating "Flash Player upgrade required". Clicked "Get Flash Player", and I'm lead to a page that says "Sorry, Adobe Flash Player is not available from Adobe.com for your device..." The same link on my iPad leads to a working video. So does that mean I somehow have flash on this thing, but it's not a version that does anything? Settings in the browser just has a simple checkbox to turn on or off plugins, nothing lists what is installed. Even tried the normal about:plugins URL, and nothing.

Tom, you haven't said it specifically yet, but it sounds like this Android implementation is no more than half-baked. Is this a fair statement? It sounds like a terrible mess from everything you've written so far.

The Bruno I-told-you-so vulture is circling?

Nope. It doesn't surprise me very much, but I thought for sure it would be the hardware that would be weak with this phone. Some other people have been giving it decent reviews, including Walt Mosberg. I can only assume they haven't really used it very much judging by what Tom's written.

Battery life again near critical when I was home. Also tried to take the touchpad picture, and it wouldn't let me. It showed the camera active with the view updating, but displayed a dialog indicating the battery was low. Had to plug it into USB to take the picture. Also, the picture has location info embedded, but at 0 latitude and longitude. Not very useful.

Also, it seems the built in e-mail client will alert me to new messages, including adding a dialog I have to dismiss in the notification bar even if I've already gotten the message and read it on another system first. The iPhone/iPad won't ping or display a notification if it pulls down an IMAP message already marked as read.

Still no idea if this is even the normal Android e-mail client. I guess everyone else uses GMail and the GMail app.

Two things:

I don't understand, you're saying your iPad shows Flash?

I wasn't entirely clear on that whole description. Are you saying you're surprised that Flash IS working or ISN'T working? If it IS working, then I'm the one who's surprised, because Flash doesn't work in 2.1, just 2.2 with the Flash app installed.

With the iPad you don't need Flash, because every web site works with it. Every web site has implemented video in a superior way so as not to need a crutch.

With Tom's Android phone, the web site wants to use Flash but can't because it's not available for the phone. The web site however thinks that there's already some version of Flash installed as reported by the "upgrade required" error. Someone needs to tell those web masters that Tom's phone also doesn't need a crutch.

Every web site? That Apple brainwashing team sure has done a number on you.

Ok, there are still three or four sites out there that also require Internet Explorer 4.

Every web site that fits your argument, perhaps. The rest are inferior and not worth mentioning or including in metrics.