Android!

[bhodi]

I got myself a nook color and rooted it! It's a pretty nice little tablet. Fast enough to do what I want to, obviously not fast enough to play videos, unfortunately. Perfect form factor for what I was looking for, which is to read and check email in bed.

I only have one problem, beyond the default reader app being mediocre, and that is that apps (I'm looking at you, Aldiko) decide they want an /sdcard external storage instead of the internal /media storage. My phone (Incredible) does the same thing. Pretty annoying, and though I've looked there doesn't seem to be any easy way to fix it by making a symlink or anything. I'd really prefer not to have to run off an sdcard, as internal storage is much much faster and 5gb is plenty for a bunch of books.

I've heard suggestions that you can change the init.rc or fuck with vold, but nothing that persists across reboots. I am surprised no one has packaged up a solution to this in one-click-install app form. From what I've seen, the "real" solution is to pull down the ramdisk with adb, cpio extract, edit the init.rc in that, and transfer it back. Not totally sure yet.

Quinton, have any suggestions? It's running 2.1.

[sigil]

Other than going to Cyanogen mod and gingerbread?

Hardware video acceleration is coming and combine that with bluetooth and  the other love heaped upon it in that flavor. I run that and an 16 gig sd.and don't worry about it.

[bhodi]

Yeah, Cyanogen and not even Froyo is really stable enough for me to use quite yet. Maybe in a few months, but I'm keeping stock for now. It was just a little annoying thing I was trying to fix.

[Longstrider]

For those of you thinking about a Thunderbolt, I just got one and I'll pass on my thoughts for anyone looking for an all-in-one smartphone for recreational use like me.  I love the phone, but it was an upgrade from a Blackberry Tour so I don't know how much of that is just HTC/Android awesomeness that can be obtained through a Droid Incredible without going to the Thunderbolt. The 4g is very fast particularly compared to the VZ 3g speeds and I love being able to access fast internet/info from apps on the fly.  One of my big concerns going in was that it wasn't a dual core processor but it seems fast enough hardware wise to me to play the casual games I play on the phone.

But after a couple of days commuting with it, I see two problems potential buyers should be aware of. 

One, the 4g coverage isn't as good as I would have hoped.  I live in a 4g city (DC) and I get 4g at my home in the suburbs (where it doesn't really matter since I can switch to WiFi for data there) but only 3g at my office downtown which sucks. I get 4g most of the way in so I don't regret the purchase. 

The other thing is that the battery life does indeed suck.  I drain about a third of my battery going into work, which is about an hour or so of listening to Pandora and maybe checking my email or playing a game of sudoku on the train.  Not a fan of having to recharge it at work.  But it looks like Verizon sells an extended battery that is big but double the life which is fine by me for $50 that I'll pick up if I can find one.  I also saw on Engadget today that there is an app on the store that allows you to shut off the 4g antenna that may help with that as well.

All in all, I like it and I'm happy with it, but if you have a newer power phone this probably isn't worth paying an ETF over.

[schild]

The Nexus S is pretty amazing. That is all.

[Tale]

I wanna be taking my phone around to my girlfriend's place with a movie or three on it to play on her hdtv via its HDMI port. Are any of the hdmi enabled phones there yet?

[Yegolev]

So far only rumors about Nexus S on VZW.  I'll check again in July, which is when I'm eligible for an upgrade.

[penfold]

I wanna be taking my phone around to my girlfriend's place with a movie or three on it to play on her hdtv via its HDMI port. Are any of the hdmi enabled phones there yet?

Nokia N8 has HDMI out, but a Symbian OS, and a pretty ugly one at that.

I got myself a cheapo HTC Wildfire the other week, my third ever upgrade. My first phone was a Nokia with a monochrome screen, then a Motorola Razr, which did fine up until i needed email/net access from work (for agencies/interviews) so got a Wildfire on PAYG. I pay 20 quid for 6 months unlimited internet (email and html) with a 500mb monthly d/l allowance, and pay per call/texts, which are usually less than 10 a month.

Although quite a few apps dont work due to resolution, the ones that I really wanted do, and the actual cost of the handset was half of what would pay for the Desire/Galaxy/Nexus.

[Tale]

I wanna be taking my phone around to my girlfriend's place with a movie or three on it to play on her hdtv via its HDMI port. Are any of the hdmi enabled phones there yet?

Nokia N8 has HDMI out, but a Symbian OS, and a pretty ugly one at that.

I got myself a cheapo HTC Wildfire the other week, my third ever upgrade. My first phone was a Nokia with a monochrome screen, then a Motorola Razr, which did fine up until i needed email/net access from work (for agencies/interviews) so got a Wildfire on PAYG. I pay 20 quid for 6 months unlimited internet (email and html) with a 500mb monthly d/l allowance, and pay per call/texts, which are usually less than 10 a month.

Although quite a few apps dont work due to resolution, the ones that I really wanted do, and the actual cost of the handset was half of what would pay for the Desire/Galaxy/Nexus.

For $99 I'm already having a pretty similar experience to the HTC Wildfire, no complaints: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbShHtAFrl4

Unfortunately I wouldn't touch the N8, even for free. I'm an Android user now. But I'm not asking whether any phones have HDMI. Several of the current Android crop do - HTC Evo, Motorola Droid X, Acer Stream, LG Optimus 2X, Sony Ericsson Arc. I'm wondering if anyone has one, and has found it a good experience playing an AVI movie over HDMI into a TV.

[SnakeCharmer]

Wife surprised me with an ipad2 last night for an early birthday present.  Returning it today for a Xoom.  Fuck converting media to an itunes format.

[Tebonas]

I never had to convert a Single Media to iTunes to listen to it or watch it on my iPad. I guess you wanted a Xoom an found a reason for it. Funnily enough its almost the Same reason I choose the iPad over the Xoom 

[SnakeCharmer]

Traded the ipad2 for a moto xoom tonight.  Much happier.  Now to figure out how to work it!

[MahrinSkel]

BTW, it's apparently pretty easy to turn a Nook Color into a Honeycomb tablet, merely requiring writing the Honeycomb OS to an SD card and restarting it.  Pull the card out and restart again and it's back to a standard Nook.

--Dave

[SnakeCharmer]

Why the hell can a Xoom not use ad-hoc whateveritscalled?

My Xoom hates ad-hoc, which my Galaxy S is happy to provide.
My Galaxy S hates bluetooth tethering, which my Xoom kinda likes.

I am at an impasse.

[Sand]

So my G1 external speaker bit the dust during a conference call I was on yesterday, while using the speaker phone.
Need a new phone. Im a t-mobile customer (and dont plan on switching)

Anything out right now, or soon (TM) that uses Android and allows automatic downloading of aps to the SD card?
Any new phone I should be looking at as my replacement?
Im a heavy web browser and use the phone for business.

[Quinton]

I'm not sure what "automatic downloading of apps to the SD card" means, exactly.

If you're sticking with TMO and you like having a physical keyboard, the G2 may be the way to go -- much faster, higher resolution display, more memory, etc, but still a solid HTC device with a physical keyboard to type on.  If you're okay with only a on-screen keyboard, there are a wider set of handsets available.

[Sand]

Quinton,

My preference leans heavily toward having an actual keyboard but its not a deal breaker.
As for downloading ap's to the SD card, I want a phone that does it as an automatic option. Unlike with the G1 where it seems I am forced to down load and run a third party program to accomplish this.

[sigil]

I've settled on Cyanogen on the nook til the bugs get removed from honeycomb. But given the love given to this platform they can take their time.

[Quinton]

I think I'm still not entirely clear on what downloading apps to the sd card means here.  Do you mean ability to download/install from non-market sources?  That should be possible on just about any Android device, except those sold by AT&T.

If you mean "ability to move apps to SD instead of internal flash", that's an option in later versions of Android that are shipping on more recent devices (I forget if this was an Eclair or Froyo feature), but the application does have to indicate that it's compatible with this feature in its manifest (not all apps do).  If you want to run apps from sd that don't indicate that they can do that, you'll need a third party OS build -- I'm not aware of any commercially shipping devices that support this out of the box.

[Sand]

I think I'm still not entirely clear on what downloading apps to the sd card means here.  Do you mean ability to download/install from non-market sources?  That should be possible on just about any Android device, except those sold by AT&T.

If you mean "ability to move apps to SD instead of internal flash", that's an option in later versions of Android that are shipping on more recent devices (I forget if this was an Eclair or Froyo feature), but the application does have to indicate that it's compatible with this feature in its manifest (not all apps do).  If you want to run apps from sd that don't indicate that they can do that, you'll need a third party OS build -- I'm not aware of any commercially shipping devices that support this out of the box.

I want to be able to download apps from the internal Market, have them automatically install on and run from the SD card. Any app.
You seem t be telling me this is an impossible dream. I dream the impossible dream!

For apps that have the ability to be run from SD (why wouldnt that be all of them?  ), can I download from market straight to SD without having to move them myself? Or this also not possible presently?

[sigil]

I think I'm still not entirely clear on what downloading apps to the sd card means here.  Do you mean ability to download/install from non-market sources?  That should be possible on just about any Android device, except those sold by AT&T.

If you mean "ability to move apps to SD instead of internal flash", that's an option in later versions of Android that are shipping on more recent devices (I forget if this was an Eclair or Froyo feature), but the application does have to indicate that it's compatible with this feature in its manifest (not all apps do).  If you want to run apps from sd that don't indicate that they can do that, you'll need a third party OS build -- I'm not aware of any commercially shipping devices that support this out of the box.

I want to be able to download apps from the internal Market, have them automatically install on and run from the SD card. Any app.
You seem t be telling me this is an impossible dream. I dream the impossible dream!

For apps that have the ability to be run from SD (why wouldnt that be all of them?  ), can I download from market straight to SD without having to move them myself? Or this also not possible presently?

pretty much.  man the nook is just about bulletproof when it comes to hacking it.  only problem I've experienced is that it's a tad heavy, and I no long have much of a gut to  rest the thing on to type.

[MuffinMan]

I want to be able to download apps from the internal Market, have them automatically install on and run from the SD card. Any app.

What is the benefit of being able to do this? Do you go app-happy and run out of space on internal memory?

[Sand]

I want to be able to download apps from the internal Market, have them automatically install on and run from the SD card. Any app.

What is the benefit of being able to do this? Do you go app-happy and run out of space on internal memory?

I have a G1 I am looking to replace presently. Other than the basic apps (which is actually a crap load and I have deleted some I dont use) that come on the phone I have 7 apps I have downloaded.
Accuweather
Age of Conquest
Facebook
Gurk
Retro Camera +
Sheriff Android
TweetCaster

Im sick and tired of voice mails and documents being inaccessible due to insufficient memory. Lastly why should I be forced to manually move apps, documents, photos, etc from the internal memory to the SD card? Is it that hard to to have it as an automatic setting in options or something? 

Im also tired of the phone getting a "connection error" for nearly every other email from my work server it tries to download. If the email has a paperclip on it (for a graphic or something in the person's signature block) the phone says "connection error" and wont download it. VERY annoying. Has this been overcome yet in the G2?

Sigil,
Nook does nothing for me. I need a phone and I need to be able to carry it in my pocket. 

[caladein]

For apps that have the ability to be run from SD (why wouldnt that be all of them?  ), can I download from market straight to SD without having to move them myself? Or this also not possible presently?

Because putting them on the SD card means the phone can lose access to them if the phone's mounted for storage (or, obviously, if you take the card out), which leads to some issues as described in the Developer Guide.

Apps2SD is actually a pretty simple process, but you need a custom ROM or a stock ROM running Froyo (2.2, or higher) to do it.  If you're running Froyo, there's an app that handles all of it for you.

[Quinton]

The G1 has an incredibly tiny amount of onboard storage for apps and data (76MB).  Typical app sizes ended up being much larger than anticipated in the first generation devices.  This has largely been corrected in later devices.  Most second generation hardware had 200-500MB of internal storage.

Nowadays you may see 1GB (like Nexus S) or greater local storage for apps and data.

In Honeycomb (3.0), we're moving to a model where apps, data, and media storage is unified -- Xoom has about 30GB for apps, data, and media all on one filesystem, giving you a lot of flexibility in what you put on your device.

Modern hardware also has ARMv7 CPUs (with FPUs and powerful GPUs) running at 800-1200MHz, typically with 256-512K L2 cache.  Compare with 528MHz, no FPU, no L2 on the ARM11 in the G1.  Nexus S, as an extreme case, has 8x the memory bus bandwidth of the G1, about 3x the ram and about 32x the flash storage.

G2 is not quite as fast as the Nexus S, but it's close.  512MB ram, 4GB flash, snappy 800MHz second generation Qualcomm Scorpion core with a decent GPU.  Overall it should be a much better experience than G1.

[MuffinMan]

That was my thought process as well, Quinton, I just didn't have any data to back it up with. I've got about 14 apps on my phone, a ton of pictures, music, etc and I've never ran out of space, internal or on the microSD. The need to move apps to the card sounds like a holdover from old hardware.

Personally, I don't think I'll ever get a phone that's not stock Android. Waiting for updates at least six months behind the Nexus One / Nexus S is for the birds. When my roommate got Gingerbread before I even had Froyo I came close to punching him in the face.

[Sand]

Trying to order Nexus S. T-Mobile not available as a carrier in our local BestBuy (the ONLY place you can buy this stupid phone ), so trying to do it through their website or over phone.
GAAAAH! This process is frustrating beyond words.
Finally gave up on website which kept giving me errors and called Best Buy to place order over phone.

Call T-Mobile
Me: Can I change my phone number (which I've had for 10+ years) to reflect my new and probably permanent home?
Them (T-Mobile): Yes but upgrade first otherwise we might loose the fact you are due for an upgrade.

Call Best Buy
Them(BestBuy): We cant get the order to go through sir.
Me: Why?
Them(BestBuy): Because when your account was combined with your wife's account when you got married, they put your wife as the primary account holder so even though T-Mobile is saying you have full account power and access our system doesnt recognize it so we need her permission to allow you to order the phone.

Call T-Mobile back
So went back to T-Mobile to try to get myself listed as primary financially responsible party. There response was they could do this but they would need to run a credit check and I should get the upgrade before doing that.
Me: Why would you need to run a credit check? Ive been a customer with T-Mobile for over a decade!
Them (T-Mobile): Well sir your account was deleted when we combined you with your wife, so you are in essence a new customer for us.
Me: Then you are a bunch of idiots!
Them: Yes sir.

So end of a long day, wife ordered and got me a new Nexus S. When it arrives in 3 days I will go to local T-Mobile store, get my new local phone number and get my name put in as primary account holder.
What an utter pain in the ass this process has been.


This is why I only upgrade once every 2-3 years or so.

[Tebonas]

So I take it T-Mobile is the only viable provider in your area?

[Sand]

No its just in the past ten + years this is the first and only CS fuck up I have had with them. They were always good to me in the past.

[Rendakor]

Anyone know of a good IRC app? I grabbed AndroIRC since it was at the top of a very long list, but I seemed to be disconnecting a lot.

[Yegolev]

All of them seem to allow assholes to send you messages and files.

[Pezzle]

Any thoughts on the Asus eee Transformer?  Thinking of getting one.  Target has a pre sale right now with $40 off.

[ffc]

Official Google Docs app with OCR  



Android Market web link (forgot this existed :/)

[Quinton]

Any thoughts on the Asus eee Transformer?  Thinking of getting one.  Target has a pre sale right now with $40 off.

I was pretty impressed with the transformer.  The tablet part is about the same size as the moto xoom, but lighter, which is nice.  Same underlying platform (NVIDIA Tegra2, 1GB ram, 1280x800 display).  They did a nice job with the keyboard integration -- which makes the device about the size/weight of a netbook and doubles the battery life.

The Samsung 10" tablet is thinner and perhaps a bit lighter, but is not shipping yet (I think they said June?), and again is the same basic platform.

Of the first-generation Android 3.0 tablets, the transformer has the most common hardware platform, a decent price point, and not excessive muckery with the base Android OS.

[Chimpy]

Ok, so does anyone have a Nexus S?

I am most likely going to buy one sometime next month (they are being released may 8 on Sprint), depending on permanent job situation. Just want to know what people think of it after using it for a while.