Google Android catch-all

Quick question for G1 owners: is there a way to backup/restore the state of your phone? I'd love to try my hand at an Android app but I'd be afraid of nuking it by accident during testing.

Minase wrote:

Quick question for G1 owners: is there a way to backup/restore the state of your phone? I'd love to try my hand at an Android app but I'd be afraid of nuking it by accident during testing.

I don't know the answer to the question, but as for the reason behind it, that's what the Android emulator is for.

Although certainly I can understand wanting that protection for when you go from emulator to actual hardware, but if things are OK with the emulator, I'd imagine the likelihood of phone nuking to be awfully small.

Although certainly I can understand wanting that protection for when you go from emulator to actual hardware, but if things are OK with the emulator, I'd imagine the likelihood of phone nuking to be awfully small.

Maybe that should be my first app then - something that backs up your personal user data on your phone to a mini-SD card!

Posting from my shiny new g1. Don't listen to the hate out there, this thing is awesome. Time to download the SDK.

Minase wrote:

Posting from my shiny new g1. Don't listen to the hate out there, this thing is awesome. Time to download the SDK.

How true.

By the way, all the apps are compartmentalized, so you shouldn't have to worry about nuking the phone during testing.

Minase wrote:

Posting from my shiny new g1. Don't listen to the hate out there, this thing is awesome. Time to download the SDK.

Is there yet an app for sharing the 3G connection over Bluetooth, USB, or wifi?

If not, I'll ask again at a later date.

If that thing had a good headphone jack, I'd switch over from an iPhone in a heartbeat. Sigh.

If that thing had a good headphone jack, I'd switch over from an iPhone in a heartbeat. Sigh.

Yeah, it's my biggest complaint so far. The POP3 email client it ships with is also complete crap. If you use gmail, though, it's great.

A saw something on Digg (?) saying that Wal-Mart was going to be selling G1's for $148.99 with a new 2 year contract.

$23 can get you a G1 unlock code.

Now I could go buy an unsubsidized phone from a T-Mobile store and get an unlock code without having to use T-Mobile's service for 3 months.

Very, very tempting. People have already gotten the G1 working with AT&T's MEdia Net with these settings (which should look familiar to any AT&T customer that's ever looked at their wireless data settings - they're just not automatically filled in on an unlocked phone, you've gotta put them in manually)

I think I'm gonna start preparing my BlackJack II for my wife.

http://graha.ms/androidproxy/

Ok. There it is. First Crack at tethering your G1.

I bought my G1 on Saturday. Gonna write something up later.

I do want to hear the Legion review. I was really close to getting one, but my service was better in my area sticking with Alltel than with AT&T. I would have had to unlock it. (Not to mention, I'm very happy with my new Touch Diamond.)

Posting this from my g1. I love it so far.

I stopped by a T-Mobile store yesterday and was surprised to see that they only had one demo unit available, and it was in the hands of employee. I fooled around with it for 5-10 minutes and pelted him with questions. Phone is surprisingly small I think,=. The form factor is a bit like the Shadow, maybe slightly thicker. Definitely much small than the Sidekick, which is a godsend. Interface is mostly smooth. Etc, etc, etc. I'm sure you've heard it all already.

Unfortunately (or maybe not so) I just recently, in July, signed a 2 year with TMO, so it would cost something around $350 to get one for myself, which just isn't gonna happen.

This past weekend, I bought my G1, got my unlock code, and started using it with my existing AT&T SIM card.

Let's get the negatives out of the way first:

* Data limited to EDGE: T-Mobile's 3G uses UTMS 1700/2100 instead of UTMS 1900, so the G1 doesn't connect to AT&T's 3G network. (T-Mobile doesn't offer 3G here at all, so I wouldn't be any better off on their service). I'm still on my parents' AT&T family plan until it runs out, but when it does, my wife and I are probably going to T-Mobile anyway.

* IM app a tiny bit wonky: Google Talk works just fine, but AOL & Yahoo complain about not being able to read my SIM's phone number when trying to connect. This is, apparently, because AIM/Yahoo/MSN use SMS instead of internet data in the Android IM app (while Google Talk uses data). I'm not sure why this doesn't work, given that normal SMS works fine, but there it is. Of course, since Google Talk = Jabber, one can use open Jabber servers with transports to other IM services. I have already done that with AIM, and will do the same for Yahoo and ICQ, so I'll have all of my contacts together in Google Talk.

* Not sure about MMS: I can't yet confirm if MMS is working right or not.

And now, the good stuff:

* Keyboard: The one great big must-have feature for me. I went from a Treo 650 to a BlackJack II and now to the G1. The iPhone's virtual keyboard was a deal-breaker for me. I'm very pleased with the G1 keyboard, which is revealed with a little screen slide-out. Every app automatically shifts into landscape mode when the keyboard is revealed, which sure beats being stuck with not only a virtual keyboard, but a non-landscape virtual keyboard as MANY iPhone apps still fail to support the landscape keyboard. And the typing experience is the best I've had on a phone yet.

* UI vs. iPhone: The UI is competitive with the iPhone's: Apple is the king of the UI, but it's not a stretch to say that the Android UI is darn close. It's very clean, extremely uniform, and the font rendering is beautiful.

* UI vs. Windows Mobile: If Android falls a hair shy of Apple's UI, it beats Windows Mobile like a red-headed stepchild. Using the G1 after having the Blackjack II just highlighted the many ways in which Windows Mobile (even after upgrading to WM 6.1) is horribly deficient.

* Trackball & buttons: Trackball + four buttons > one button. There is a strong appeal to Apple's one-button, everything-else-is-touch simplicity, but after using both the iPhone and the G1, one thing became clear: touch isn't a be-all, end-all, replace-everything-else input method. There's no more compelling argument for this fact than the G1's trackball. The tiny, highly-responsive ball is vastly superior for many scrolling tasks than finger dragging (particularly if, y'know, I want to see what I'm scrolling through, and not have my grubby fingers blocking half the screen). Lifehacker put it best: "economy of motion". It takes a lot less effort and motion to scroll with the trackball than it does to finger drag. The trackball isn't necessarily better in ALL situations (which is why the touchscreen is still there!), but it certainly is in some. The trackball is, in internet parlance, "full of win".

* Apps: The 70MB is a little bit of an issue, but not a huge one. Most apps are pretty damn tiny: anywhere from 100kb to 2MB, with games that have a lot of graphics being a few MB larger. Any app that requires a large amount of space would likely separate data from executable code anyway, and store the data on the SD card. Executable code by itself isn't that large. Plus, it probably won't be long before someone implements a launcher patch that swaps applications from the SD card to local memory for execution (which is how virtually all SD-using phones do it - the apps don't launch from the SD card, but are swapped into phone memory dynamically when launched).

* Background Apps: Android is a full multi-tasking OS, unlike the iPhone, which allows for true background apps. Users don't actually quit out of applications, either. Instead, apps that are suspended (when you hit Home to go to something else) remain in the background until the Android OS needs to reclaim the memory for another app, at which time it automatically shuts down the unused app. This is extremely nice, as it prevents people from accidentally having a lot of memory-chomping apps in the background (hi, Windows Mobile). Apps that are meant to keep running in the background, like the IM program, are left alone, so they aren't reclaimed unless the phone gets to an exceptional state where it can't hold all of the foreground stuff in memory.

* Browser: Even though I'm on EDGE now instead of 3G like my BlackJack II, the browsing experience is much faster on the G1, as the browser itself is considerably better.

* Google!: You need to like Google services to want a Google Android phone. If you do, there's a lot to like in the Google realm (and using the phone for a few days made me understand why Google pursued this project). Your phone contacts are your Google contacts. That requires me to clean up and consolidate my Google contacts, but with that adjustment, it works well. And being able to edit my contacts from the comfort of my PC rather than entirely on the phone. Oh, sure, I could sync contacts with Outlook on Windows Mobile, but how much Windows do I use? (Answer: long enough for Steam to start and run a game).

* Notifications: FINALLY! After suffering through Windows Mobile's crappy inability to provide this functionality, I am in love. Android has a universal notification system, in the form of mini-icons in the top left corner, which finger-drags down to reveal a tray with the notification details. Every app that has a reason to notify you uses this notification tray. It beats the living dogsh*t out of the self-torture that was WinMo's Home/Today screen plugins.

* Keyguard: Rather than just a simple slider, Android presents you with a 3 x 3 pattern of dots, and allows you to define a specific dot-connecting pattern as your keyguard unlock. A valid pattern connects anywhere from 3 to all 9 dots, making for nearly 400,000 possibilities. It's not only a keyguard, but a security measure as well (it temporarily locks out after a few failed attempts, making a brute force attack particularly time-consuming).

Specific apps:

* Twidroid: TinyTwitter on WinMo was nice, but Twidroid is a killer mobile Twitter app. Very nice and clean interface, and customizable notification support. When someone replies to me on Twitter, I get buzzed. So awesome.

* Ringdroid: It's like a miniature touchscreen Audacity, made specifically for cutting MP3s into ringtones. Opens up a little waveform screen, with a little "highlighted" area that you stretch or shrink to cover the part of the waveform that you want to clip to a ringtone. Tap anywhere on the waveform and audio playback begins from that point, making it easy to find where in the waveform you want to clip. Absolutely brilliant. Easiest way to make a rington ever, it beats even loading up real Audacity on the PC to do the job.

* Locale: Basically, Locale allows you to automate phone behavior based on your GPS location. An example from my phone is, once I get to work, my ringer automatically turns off. You create behaviors by tapping a new location on a map, stretching or shrinking the radius around that pin to fit the range you want to fall in, and then define the behavior that occurs when you get within that GPS range. My ringer turns off automatically at work, turns on at full volume at home, and resets to a more moderate volume level when not in either of those locations. Ringer control is the best, but Locale controls more than the ringer. It can change wallpapers, and even automate Twitter tweets! (Like, have it auto-tweet "I'm at X sports bar" when you arrive to the bar). It can also change ringtones and turn wifi/GPS on or off (the latter kinda works if phone triangulation is still enabled).

* ShopSavvy and CompareEverything: Two barcode-scanning apps, which connect to the Internet to draw a lot of neat information (online prices, local prices, reviews, etc) when you scan something. Using these is kind of an "a-ha!" moment, as I had heard about such things before, but never really used one. ShopSavvy does a better job of finding product reviews, while CompareEverywhere uses the open UPCDatabase.com system, and allows you to upload new UPCs that it doesn't have (though the one that I tried - my G1 box - didn't seem to upload). Both find certain things that the other doesn't, so both will stay on my phone for the forseeable future.

* ConnectBot: SSH client. Blew my boss's mind when I showed her that I was able to log into our webserver on my phone.

* Zombie, Run: Clever little GPS-based game. You tap your destination on the map, and how many zombies you want chasing you. The game is you trying to navigate from your position to your destination, avoiding the "zombies" (moving red dots superimposed on the map). A couple of crazy screenshots here (I suggest playing with a much lower zombie setting!).

* ParkMark: Parking at a stadium or something, and you want to be able to find your car after the game? Launch ParkMark, click the big "Mark your parking spot" button, and it records the GPS position you're at. Then, when you want to get back there, it leads you back. Basically a streamlined, simplified version of more general GPS "mark this location" usage. Very handy.

* Pixelpipe: Upload pictures from the handset directly to photo sites like Flickr and Photobucket, or social networking sites like Facebook. There's tons of sites that this thing supports.

* AK Notepad: Nice basic little note-taking app.

There's more apps that I'm still evaluating, but I am enjoying this phone a ton.

Apps that I still want:
* Connection sharing: One just came out, and it's only a preliminary solution, but I don't doubt a more full solution is around the corner.
* VNC viewer: Someone made a VNC viewer for the Android emulator, but it hasn't been brought up to date. Again, probably an inevitable app.
* IM: The built-in IM app is fine, but I'd like to see someone make a really great one - and one that didn't require me to use Jabber transports for non-Google Talk IM services (IM+ exists and works fine on AIM/Yahoo on my AT&T service, but IM+ is kinda crappy).

Ringdroid: It's like a miniature touchscreen Audacity, made specifically for cutting MP3s into ringtones. Opens up a little waveform screen, with a little "highlighted" area that you stretch or shrink to cover the part of the waveform that you want to clip to a ringtone. Tap anywhere on the waveform and audio playback begins from that point, making it easy to find where in the waveform you want to clip. Absolutely brilliant. Easiest way to make a rington ever, it beats even loading up real Audacity on the PC to do the job.

Thanks for the tip - this app is incredible. One game you didn't mention is Pac-Man - they did a great job allowing you to control it using the trackball, your finger or by moving the phone itself. I'm looking forward to when people get NES emulators running on this thing.

One annoying thing I've found - it doesn't appear to be easy to add people in your call log to your contacts. I should be able to just hit menu and 'add to contacts', but instead I've got to write the number down or something and add it manually.

Another one for my list:

* Phone updates: I didn't know what being on AT&T would mean for receiving phone updates "OTA" (as they say).

But, this evening, I got an update notification. I let it run, and it updated me to the just-now-released RC30 build. (I was on my home wifi at the time, so I don't know if that played a role in the update's availability or not)

Some have reported incorrectly that the RC30 update relates to blocking SIM unlocking. Instead, it's related to an obscure exploit method of gaining root-level access to the phone. (Blocking SIM unlocking seems quite illogical, seeing as it's something that T-Mobile explicitly allows you to do, giving you the unlock code on request after 90 days of service. Other people providing unlock codes are just offering the same codes T-Mobile does, without the wait).

So, after a brief panic reading about the RC30 update as my phone patched itself, a quick check of dialing calls and accessing data got me away from the cliff's edge, then a little logical thinking brought me all the way back down.

Minase wrote:

One game you didn't mention is Pac-Man.

I tried to download Pac-Man, and it said I hadn't paid for it, even though it's still listed as "Free" on the Market (and, indeed, "Free" is the only current working option on Market).

I don't know if it was a hiccup or what, but I may try again later.

But what I would really like to see games like a Trade Wars or something. Or maybe a Roguelike game.

Although I have a game idea that I intend to write as an Android app when I have the time. It'll be SO AWESOME.

Although I have a game idea that I intend to write as an Android app when I have the time. It'll be SO AWESOME.

I have some ideas too, but that 'time' you speak of is in very short supply.

One thing folks haven't mentioned hre- how's the WiFi? IS the signal you pick up strong enough? I read one review that said the WiFi sucked up battery power very quickly....

cewargamer wrote:

One thing folks haven't mentioned hre- how's the WiFi? IS the signal you pick up strong enough? I read one review that said the WiFi sucked up battery power very quickly....

Wifi works well for me at home. As for battery, well, it sucks battery the way a 3G radio does.

Speaking of wifi, a new GPS-enabled wifi scanner (Wifiscan) has released to Market. Records GPS locations of wifi points found, and exports them to use with Google Earth.

One thing I've been excited about is the possibility of wifi security tools being made/ported to Android.

One thing folks haven't mentioned hre- how's the WiFi? IS the signal you pick up strong enough? I read one review that said the WiFi sucked up battery power very quickly....

Wifi works good, but there are some usability improvements needed. If you're in a spot with several low-strength access points, it will cycle through them continuously and you can't tell it to only connect to a certain access point. I've also had calls completely missed because of this, so I'd recommend just turning WiFi off if it gives you trouble.

RE: Battery, it does suck but it's a limitation of the technology right now.

*Legion* wrote:

Some have reported incorrectly that the RC30 update relates to blocking SIM unlocking. Instead, it's related to an obscure exploit method of gaining root-level access to the phone.

I'm a little disheartened by this; it's important to me that when I get a smart phone, it be *my* phone. Having unfettered access to the OS & filesystem is a requirement, to me, of an 'open' device. I'd hoped that was included in Google's definition of an open smartphone platform, but it appears not.

johnny531 wrote:

Having unfettered access to the OS & filesystem is a requirement, to me, of an 'open' device.

I dunno. It seems pretty practical and rational to fix a root exploit that allows anyone to come in and destroy your phone for you.

Guess I will be waiting for the 3G version that works on AT&T. How is the browser? If it as crash happy as Safari on the iPhone?

Edwin wrote:

Guess I will be waiting for the 3G version that works on AT&T. How is the browser? If it as crash happy as Safari on the iPhone?

Hmm... I can't recall having the browser crash. I've had a couple of 3rd party applications crash, but I don't think the browser ever has for me.

psu_13 wrote:
johnny531 wrote:

Having unfettered access to the OS & filesystem is a requirement, to me, of an 'open' device.

I dunno. It seems pretty practical and rational to fix a root exploit that allows anyone to come in and destroy your phone for you.

If I want to destroy your phone, given physical access to it, I'll just drop it on the floor. This patch did very little to pragmatically improve security.

I don't want to rag too much on Google, because I do believe they're pushing openness much farther than the competition, but I do find their demonstrated intention to keep owners locked out disappointing.

From what I understand, the 'bug' was that everything you were typing was sent to the shell running in he background and that was what the patch was addressing. Am I incorrect?

absurddoctor wrote:

From what I understand, the 'bug' was that everything you were typing was sent to the shell running in he background and that was what the patch was addressing. Am I incorrect?

Yep, that's my understanding as well. Clearly a pretty boneheaded behavior, and a fix was appropriate.