Google Android catch-all

Opera Mini's out for the G1. Haven't had a chance to play with it too much, yet.

There is also a white model out now. I really hope a AT&T 3G model comes out sometime soon.

Probably sometime in febuary. (T-mobile has a 90 day exclusive)

Weird. I can go a whole day without a charge. I know, that isn't bragging, but once I let my battery drain and then charged it, it's worked fine since then. I still will charge while at work once in a while, but I don't see the need for an extra battery unless you're a power user or traveling. Also, taking the back cover off isn't trivial. I'd prefer to just buy an extended battery someday.

Has anyone used skype with the G1 yet?
I'm wondering about the call quality and will it use my minutes.

I'm assuming it won't if you're at a wifi. Haven't tried yet.

DSGamer wrote:

Weird. I can go a whole day without a charge. I know, that isn't bragging, but once I let my battery drain and then charged it, it's worked fine since then. I still will charge while at work once in a while, but I don't see the need for an extra battery unless you're a power user or traveling. Also, taking the back cover off isn't trivial. I'd prefer to just buy an extended battery someday.

I routinely go for two days on a charge. But this will depend heavily on how much traffic you generate (internet usage, phone calls), and especially your GPS usage - GPS eats your battery like it's a candy.

Auto rotation for those that want it like the iPhone or Blackberry Storm.

Scored a white G1 today while visiting my parents in NYC. Reading and posting this msg from it while giggling like a little girl. Now I gotta revisi the back pages to learn all about the killer apps.

I hope I learn to type faster on this thing.

Novocain wrote:

I hope I learn to type faster on this thing.

You will. I have. The keyboard's roomy enough that you actually CAN type decently fast, instead of always being limited by hopelessly tiny and cramped keys.

Though I'm not yet where I was with my old Treo 650. But I'm better at it than I was with my BlackJack II.

I just bought one of these for $125 thanks to American Express' Wishlist. I was almost sold on one anyway, but held off because I wasn't sure I wanted to be locked into an unlimited data plan for 2 years. Now I don't have that problem. Worst case scenario, if I don't like it or don't need it's exotic and mysterious gizmacks and whizbangs, I can hawk it on Ebay and still come out ahead.

Legion, how do you get Locale to recognize when you've left a location? I have my phone setup to shut off the ringer when I go to work and a couple movie theaters in the area. To turn on wifi at home, etc.

What I can't get nailed down is how does locale switch back to regular settings if you're not in that area? I haven't seen that it does it itself unless it's subtle. So what do you do?

*Legion* wrote:
Novocain wrote:

I hope I learn to type faster on this thing.

You will. I have. The keyboard's roomy enough that you actually CAN type decently fast, instead of always being limited by hopelessly tiny and cramped keys.

Though I'm not yet where I was with my old Treo 650. But I'm better at it than I was with my BlackJack II.

I'm much faster than I was on my Centro or my wife's old Treo. It's just a better keyboard. And a better keyboard than the HTC Touch Pro. I just wish T-Mobiles other phones didn't suck so badly. My wife is in love with the Samsung Rant and there isn't a comparable phone on T-Mobile with a comparable data plan. Or I wish Sprint took SIM cards. Either way it's kind of lame to have to carry two phone carriers.

Also, my only only regret otherwise about the G1 is that I really wish it had competent voice dialing. I really want to be able to push my bluetooth headset and call up random contacts like I was able to with my Samsung A920 5 years ago.

You have to set your Default settings.

If the Default settings are blank, Locale doesn't know what to switch it back to.

It helps if you think of Locale not as a state machine, but simply as a sequence of triggers (which it is).

Enter a GPS sphere -> change phone to settings defined for that location
Leave a GPS sphere -> change phone to Default settings (not "change it to what it was before")

*Legion* wrote:

You have to set your Default settings.

If the Default settings are blank, Locale doesn't know what to switch it back to.

It helps if you think of Locale not as a state machine, but simply as a sequence of triggers (which it is).

Enter a GPS sphere -> change phone to settings defined for that location
Leave a GPS sphere -> change phone to Default settings (not "change it to what it was before")

That's exactly what I needed. Thanks, Legion!!!

DSGamer wrote:

I just wish T-Mobiles other phones didn't suck so badly. My wife is in love with the Samsung Rant and there isn't a comparable phone on T-Mobile with a comparable data plan. Or I wish Sprint took SIM cards. Either way it's kind of lame to have to carry two phone carriers.

Personally, I love my Blackberry Curve with T-Mobile... the BB data plan is (or was) $20/mo.

Yeah, the Curve is nice. I would get it if I were my wife. Unfortunately I'm not my wife and her brain instantly thinks Blackberry == working constantly. So she dismissed it out of hand.

DSGamer wrote:

Yeah, the Curve is nice. I would get it if I were my wife. Unfortunately I'm not my wife and her brain instantly thinks Blackberry == working constantly. So she dismissed it out of hand.

I suppose there's no way to change her mind. All I know is that I don't use it for any work related stuff-- just for personal email, twitter, chat programs, music, video, ebooks, etc. It's no iPhone or G1, but it is a pretty solid (cheap) smart phone.

If anyone sees any deals on the G1 for under $300 without a contract, please let me know.

Edwin wrote:

If anyone sees any deals on the G1 for under $300 without a contract, please let me know.

Maybe something worth looking out for: Kogan.

sheared wrote:

Maybe something worth looking out for: Kogan.

Looks like a Blackjack with Android installed on it (not a bad thing, though that screen's awfully small for touchscreen use).

One thing I'd be worried about is the 320x240 (QVGA) screen. Since the G1 (like the iPhone) is 320x480 (HVGA), most 3rd party Android apps have been designed with that resolution in mind (some, of course, being ports or dual-developed iPhone apps). There'll definitely be an adjustment period when developers start tweaking their apps to be more QVGA friendly.

Ugh. A new wrinkle.

I've been having friends tell me that they're going to voice mail at times that I have seemingly been available to take their calls. Since that kind of thing is heavily anecdotal I just shrugged it off. Well it happened again tonight at a really bad time and so when I got home I decided to test it. I called my G1 from my wife's phone 10 times. 4 of those times it went to voice mail with absolutely no notification on my G1. Incredible. So I called T-Mobile technical support. I was told that this was a known issue and had been a ticket in their system since the 16th of November. The workaround, until they fix it, is to turn off data synchronization.

Then I went online to see if I was going crazy/T-Mobile was going crazy. Apparently it's a problem with their network. Their Edge network can't carry data and voice at the same time. The 3G network can. However, I'm rarely on 3G.

So that's that. If I want to be receiving my emails as intended when I bought the phone I can count on 40% of my calls being dropped. If I want my phone to actually work like a phone I have to turn off data synchronization.

Ugh.

Wow, that's lame.

Makes me glad I'm using the phone on AT&T.

But that's a failure of Edge itself, not T-Mobile's network. It'll happen no matter what type of network you are on.

Strange, I've yet to experience this. Probably because I'm on wifi most of the time.

Oh well. Whenever AT&T gets their version of the G1, I'll sell mine and switch.

Edwin wrote:

But that's a failure of Edge itself, not T-Mobile's network. It'll happen no matter what type of network you are on.

Interesting. Yeah, I don't ever remember those problems on Sprint/CDMA. Ugh. I hate the thought of having to choose a Sprint smartphone. But given that we're paying double the phone bill for me to be on another carrier, this just doesn't fly. Paying $70 extra for worse phone service. The phone is cool, but not that cool. I need a phone with a touch screen and a decent keyboard so I can use the calendar easily. Everything on top of that is gravy. This is unfortunate, to say the least.

What freaks me out the most is that I did a test where I ran YouTube and tried to call into my phone from my wife's phone. 100% call failure rate. The main reason I'm sensitive to this is because when I was hit by a car in August and someone had to ring up my wife the urgency of why a phone needs to be a phone first and foremost was never so clear.

DSGamer wrote:
Edwin wrote:

But that's a failure of Edge itself, not T-Mobile's network. It'll happen no matter what type of network you are on.

Interesting. Yeah, I don't ever remember those problems on Sprint/CDMA. Ugh. I hate the thought of having to choose a Sprint smartphone. But given that we're paying double the phone bill for me to be on another carrier, this just doesn't fly. Paying $70 extra for worse phone service. The phone is cool, but not that cool. I need a phone with a touch screen and a decent keyboard so I can use the calendar easily. Everything on top of that is gravy. This is unfortunate, to say the least.

What freaks me out the most is that I did a test where I ran YouTube and tried to call into my phone from my wife's phone. 100% call failure rate. The main reason I'm sensitive to this is because when I was hit by a car in August and someone had to ring up my wife the urgency of why a phone needs to be a phone first and foremost was never so clear.

Um, wow. I just did the same test with my iPhone on edge, same results. While downloading a youtube video over edge, every call I made to my phone went to voicemail without ringing. That's, uh, a pretty big problem that I was never aware of before...

Found some more info on this, specific to the iPhone, but it seems that the general issue would be the same for any phone using Edge. Source.

The long and the short of it is that on some edge networks, calls will come through, on others not so much.

“While iPhone is actively transferring data over EDGE—downloading a webpage, for example—you may not be able to receive calls. Incoming calls may go to voicemail.”

The “may not be able to receive calls” portion stems from the fact that there are two types of EDGE network types, NOM1 and NOM2. When your iPhone is connected to a NOM1 network, the data transmission will generally be interrupted, and the incoming call allowed to come through. When your iPhone is connected to a NOM2 network, however, the EDGE data transfer process cannot be interrupted, and the call will generally go to voicemail.

Fortunately, there is a way to check whether you are connected to a NOM1 or NOM2 network. First, put your iPhone in field test mode by accessing the Phone application, tapping Keypad, then entering *3001#12345#* and pressing Call.

Tap GPRS Information and look at the entry next to nom. It will be either 1 or 2. If you see a 1, you’ll likely be able to receive a call while transferring data. If you see a 2, you likely won’t.

Unfortunately, it appears that NOM2 is much more prevalent on AT&T’s data network. In fact, we’ve yet to see our iPhone connect to a NOM1 network. As such, we can’t even state with certainty that the iPhone supports NOM1 at all.

I scored a black G1 off craigslist last night as a Christmas gift for Clover for $250. She likes it a lot more than her old Wing that sucked so bad.