If I thought for one minute that turning on my iPod Shuffle was going to cause a 400-ton airliner to go spiraling out of the sky in flames, I would never get on an airplane again.

tanstaafl.

Eh, either way works, and it definitely didn't factor into my like or dislike of the device. Left to right made sense to me, since the home screens also move left to right. Also, to get into that list it's a single button. From what I've seen of "stock" Android, it's normally a button on the bottom that you swipe up, so up and down makes a bit more sense there.

What did strike me as odd with the Samsung one is the random color blocks it would put behind all the apps in the launcher. If I put an app on one of the home screens, the colored background went away.


I found this odd when reading the Engadget Epic 4G (Galaxy S for Sprint) review

Even with that setting on with my Captivate, GPS performance was, well, horrible. I can't remember what the default was, but I definitely had that setting on, and I do know my wireless equipment is at least in Skyhook's database.

The same Engadget review also noted the misleading power information from the Android battery monitor.

WiFi systems on airplanes disable themselves when the cabin door is closed, and only turn back on when the plane is above 10,000 feet. Also, WiFi use on a plane is not going to have as much RF power as a cell phone trying to transmit to a tower a few miles below the plane.

There are several planes out there now equipped with picocells to allow cell phone use. The idea here is the cell phones inside the plane transmit to antennas in the cabin, and the picocell takes care of retransmitting the signal via either satellite, or down to the ground with antennas on the outside of the plane. This way, cell phones will only use minimal RF power to transmit.


The danger isn't in a device causing the plane to fall from the sky, it's usually either interfering with navigational equipment, or the radio transmissions between the control tower and pilots. If electronics did pose a risk to anything really vital, better steps would be taken to ensure the marketing guy in row 5 did actually turn off his Blackberry. As for an iPod shuffle, it's more a distraction reducing issue. If a passenger has headphones on and music blaring, they may miss vital information if something does go wrong during takeoff or landing (the highest risk part of a flight). It's also far easier to say "turn off everything" instead of "turn off A, B, C and D, but E, F, G and H are ok".

I just had an idea for an app I think Apple might never approve....

Odd. On my phone, that option just turns on/off the WiFi SSID and cell tower ID lookup which only gives you a vague idea of where you are. There is another option to turn Assisted GPS on and off which does the faster GPS position fix by downloading data from a server.

Yeah, I know, I was amazed too given the chips I'd used years before that were in the 30mA ballpark... some of the phone gps chips do the frontend stuff in "the gps chip" but run the algorithms in software on the baseband, which makes it cheaper but means you don't have all those specialized hardware that proper GPS chips have which is a lot more efficient about tracking satellites.

iPhone4 is more in the state of the art ballpark for GPS power though...

That's classy. Remind me again how big Google are? This seems so much like an operation running out of someone's garage.

I don't get it. Should they be free?

Agreed, I have no idea what you're referring to, Bruno. I mean, I expect you to lash out negatively at every single tiny thing that Google does, particularly when it comes to Android, but now you're not even being clear in your negativity.

It's quite simple, really:

Google tried something new with the Nexus One.

The experiment didn't work (for the most part), so they stopped selling it.

Now, they're shipping it as a developer phone, replacing the aged G1 that they used to have in the role.

I'm not sure why you'd even bother to get worked up over such a thing...

Google's whole Nexus operation is like someone running a first-time business from their parents' garage, except what's worse is that they seem to put no effort into it. It's shameful for a company this well funded to demonstrate that they don't give a rat's ass about fit and polish, not only of the product, but how they sell it.

You want accessories? No problem, buy them from HTC's *European* site. Classy. They may as well be selling these things out of white vans in parking lots.

I'm not an Apple apologist, but anyone who doesn't think this is some cheap low-rent and low-class way to run a product and platform is drinking way too much Google Evil Juice.

lulz

I think you're missing the point of the Nexus One, but I really don't feel like defending it again. What good would it do anyway?


It says right on that page that you can buy them from the US HTC store. They were only available through the European store for a short while, probably while the stock of accessories made their way to HTC's fulfillment centers. I don't find that offensive.

It's Google cheesy and unprofessional execution of their mobile product(s) I have issues with. The Nexus is and always has been nothing more than a basic/typical HTC-built Android reference, essentially used as same, a reference platform. Maybe Google were testing the waters with retail sales, maybe not. It's clear from their actions that retail didn't pan out - sales were abysmal.

As an aside, apart from a select few geeky types, I don't believe for a second that anyone is actively seeking out Android phones. Google has put itself in the Microsoft-style position by simply becoming a de-facto fall-back for OEMs. They're going a few better than MS however because they're essentially providing the goods for free and allowing OEMs to change whatever they want. This is a win-win for most OEMs since it gives them a base OS to start with along with a ton of tools they don't need to develop themselves. It's not turning out to produce great handsets, but that's not something most OEMs have been concerned with anyway, as long as they're able to crank out a dozen models per year.

I still have great interest in Android personally, but again, because it provides a nice package of a base OS, graphics libraries and tools. This is from the OEM perspective. I wouldn't be interested in the least in developing commercially *for* Android handsets, since Google has made it pretty clear they're not going to stand by it to make it really shine as a stable and polished platform, nor are they interested in helping ISVs monetize their work. Free software is better for Google's ad revenue. And as long as OEMs are leading the charge and providing ad hits, there's really little impetus for Google to cater to the retail market and consumers with fit and polish.

Very well stated, Bruno.

tanstaafl.

I'm happy to hear that apparently the G2 is going to be a "Google experience" phone. That's a terrible name for it, but I wish all Android phones had this, or at least had the option to go to it.

Motorola not exactly doing a fine job with upgrades

It seems that all the usual players are still doing the usual thing. It doesn't matter that it's Android this time around, once a shite manufacturer, always a shite manufacturer it seems.

Too bad they didn't have this on the Captivate, Tom. At least part of the annoyances would have been alleviated.

It honestly wouldn't have changed my opinion much. The TouchWiz launcher wasn't bad. Most of the Samsung/AT&T bad parts couldn't be turned off, like the broken Mail client or all the "value added" crapware.

Seems like Android handsets are shaping up to be closed systems and the iPhone, all things considered, seems more open every day...

http://www.androidcentral.com/shenanigans-skype-mobile-update-does-not-allow-use-wifi-after-all

You see, Android is only as open as your carrier wants it to be. There doesn't seem to be any indication this will ever change. And recent Verizon/Google announcements only reinforce that.

G2 will come with vanilla Android, from what I hear.

Surely that has nothing to do with Android as such, more about some deal between Skype and Verizon ?

Whose to say that if the iPhone was on Verizon that Skype wouldn't have the same issue ?

Or am I missing something ?

While it is due to the deal between Verizon and Skype, it does show Google is pretty much asleep at the wheel when it comes to keeping their "open" platform open to the end user. Want Skype on Android? Go buy a Verizon Droid phone. And be forced to use it over 3G only, on a device and platform touted to be "open".

This is a very different situation then the open nature of Linux. The GPL forces certain things to ensure the core remains open all the way to the end user to the point of allowing that user to see the source code behind the OS. It also has provisions to ensure a vendor like Dell can't package it up, lock it down, and ship it on their computers. If Dell want to ship Linux, it has to remain open.

I still don't see what any of that has got to do with Android. If Dell did some deal with Skype for example they could easily ship PCs with Linux and bundle a version of Skype that for example was some wizzy version of Skype that did things other other versions couldn't do but only worked on Dell PCs.

I really don't see that this Skype-locked-down-to-Verizon situation is anything to do with how open Android is.

And how could Google do anything about the Skype-Verizon thing anyway ? I guess they could ban the app from the market place, but then wouldn't people be shouting at them for being closed in the same way Apple are ?

Can you download Skype software from the marketplace to run on an Android phone on Verizon?

The difference is only that the iPhone is an Apple product. Android phones are pretty much getting segmented into carrier products. I'd be surprised if a universal app market lasts forever.

Yes.

Other than the skype software that link was talking about. In other words, a skype program that will work on any handset over wifi.

Well, if Google doesn't do anything, they risk carriers getting rid of the source of revenue helping to make Android free.



So, I have my locked down, closed walled garden device that lets me run Skype over WiFi or 3G, and offers me a choice of three search providers. Or I could choose the device from Samsung on Verizon powered by open Google that locks me down to using Bing, and no Skype over WiFi.

I guess the issue is, what does open mean and how does it apply to Android? Does it mean freedom for the end user? Or just for the carriers and device manufacturers? Google should probably clarify that and make a stand if it means freedom for the end user. In less then a year, Verizon went from offering the Droid, a stock Android experience pretty much, to now devices that don't even let you use Google Search on a Google OS.

What I can't believe is that people thought it would go any other way. Apple is the only company in mobile who cares one bit about a somewhat open end-user experience. Sure, they have a curated app store and SDK rules, but their philosophy has always been a customer-driven one, rather than a carrier-driven one like every other handset manufacturer.

When these other guys see Android, they don't think about the customer or customer experience. That's their last priority if it's on their list at all. What they see is a FREE OS that they can re-brand. That saves them millions of dollars in development costs.