Android!

[schild]

I had someone here take me to the dumpster. Wasn't in there. Turns out it SOMEHOW got wedged into my emergency brake well.

[schild]

And now I wait for the Jellybean rollout to Nexus S phones.

[Draegan]

I put Jellybean on my Kindle Fire and it's awesome.  Battery life so much improved from the ICS rom I had on it.

I think I need a better launcher for it though.  I haven't messed around too much with it.

[schild]

That's what I'm hoping. My battery life is shit.

[Draegan]

With an ICS rom I was almost able to watch the battery life drain just by reading a book on it and no wifi.  Now I can leave wifi on and idle my KF and the battery life is amazing.

JB just does wonders all around with everything.  I just need to enable Hotspot with my phone so I can use my KF out of my house.  Foxfi doesn't seem to do a very good job.

[NowhereMan]

Looking at upgrading my handset at the moment, it seems like most of the really nice looking new handsets are ridiculously large. I've got a 3.65" Nexus One and think the screen is about right for carrying around and the SIII is looking like 4.8". Are any of the newest generation coming out with smaller screens? Or would I be better going with a slightly larger (but really wouldn't want much more than a 4" screen) but not excessively so phone? Largely I use the phone for phone stuff/emails/maps and navigation/some web browsing/music. I'm not planning on watching HD movies regularly on it and while I enjoy some of the tech advances I haven't seen any must have features.

Alternatively as the Nexus One seems to still be doing the job should I look at trying to load a JellyBean Rom and just changing my payment plan to something cheaper? Is that even a possibility?

Edit: Looking at some of the other stuff that's happening with the latest phones, I think if I'm getting a new one with a good display I'd need more than 16GB of storage. An SD card slot seems pretty necessary. Also some of the new phones no longer have a USB mass storage option? That sucks, primarily as I like to use my phone as a general music device I can plug into my car and use like a USB stick while it charges/slows the battery drain from using Google Navigation.

[Engels]

Last night I showed my gf that her nexus 5 running ICS could use the google's voice command/search thingie. She'd hardly noticed it was there, and her jaw dropped when I talked to her phone for just about anything on teh googles. Google undersold this feature, since it absolutely kicks Siri's ass around the block. I, of course, am stuck with an iPhone for the foreseable future mainly because my connection to my car's aplifier is an iPhone only plug.

[MahrinSkel]

Any of the relevant professionals have an opinion about the Coby Kyros series, such as this one?  Preliminary research would seem to indicate it's decent hardware, but I should figure on rooting it and installing Gingerbread (the A8 not playing well with Ice Cream Sandwich or Jellybean, and Google Play being locked out as a result).  At $170 with a front-facing camera, USB host, and an HDMI port it's damned tempting (I'm even considering the 7-inch for my toddler, so she'll leave everyone else's alone).  It's the first one I've seen that hit my entire feature wish-list for less than $400.  Thoughts?

--Dave

[Quinton]

No direct experience with those Coby tablets.  Based on the specs on their website, they are (10" and 7") 1024x600 and 800x480 pixel displays, with a 1GHz A8 core.  1.5 and 1.1 pounds, respectively.  That's pretty underpowered, relatively speaking (most newer Android tablets are multi-core A9 or A15 at 1.2-1.5GHz with pretty decent GPUs).  At least they both have 1GB of ram (skimping on memory really hurts a lot).  I'd definitely want to check one of these out in person before buying one.  For those prices it's quite possible the display quality and build quality is not so hot, and I'd be concerned about the CPU/GPU being underpowered.

For the money, the Nexus 7 gives you pretty awesome performance and stability at 1280x800, quadcore A9 T30.  At 7" that gives some pretty great pixel density as well.  Up to date, no wacky skinning, fully supported in AOSP JellyBean/4.1 OS also is nice -- advantage of both being up to date and being very easy for third parties (like CM) to hack on.  Sadly the Transformer Prime (ASUS's 10" cousin with similar specs) is not as price competitive.

I'm not sure that I'd want to go lower density than 1280x800 on a 10" display (and higher would be nice), though.

[MahrinSkel]

The 7" would be for a four year old and would represent quite an upgrade from the LeapPad Tablet she's been using since Christmas.  As far as resolution goes, I'm frankly not too worried as it's about half the size of my monitor and better than half the pixel count (admittedly, I'd be a little closer to it, but I'm not going to be using Photoshop or playing 3D games on it).  If I use it for video they'll probably be 360p, there's little point in watching 1080p video on a screen smaller than a wall.

I don't want to carry around anything that costs more than $200.  If I drop and break a $170 tablet I'll be annoyed but not seriously screwed.  If I want CPU horsepower or display fidelity, I'll use a laptop or a real PC.  This is just something to websurf with when a real computer isn't practical (the phone is usable in a pinch, but it's hardly easy or convenient for working my way through a forum or my blogroll).  Nor am I going to give a 4 year old anything that costs much more than $100 (the 7 inch Kyros is $109).  Screen resolution and GPU throughput is a compromise I'm prepared to accept.

--Dave

[MuffinMan]

Well, I had an interesting day today. A few days ago my Galaxy S screen went on the fritz and stopped working. My contract is up in a month and a half and I don't want to renew so I went to Ebay. Bought another Galaxy S for $75, but wait after the auction is over it tells me the seller is also selling a Nexus S. Didn't even think about switching to a different phone but I bid and win the Nexus S as well, same price at $75. Somehow I went from owning one phone to three today. Tried to activate the Nexus but no dice, Sprint tells me it's still on their account. The Epic however, successfully activates.

Now in the meantime while I wait for them to call Sprint to remove the phone I get to decide which phone I keep. The Galaxy S is the Epic, Sprint variant, the physical keyboard I don't really need due to the size it adds, it's in perfect shape. Nexus S, more banged up, pure Android (although Jelly Bean is probably the last update it will get, has NFC.) Same processor, camera difference is negligible. Hmm....

[NowhereMan]

Looking through things a bit more I'm figuring I'd rather just go with a SIM only upgrade for my present phone as it's going to be cheaper by a couple of hundred £s vs. getting locked into a contract for a handset I'm not sure I want. If I do look into upgrading though my thinking at the moment is either an older Nexus S or the Galaxy Nexus. The big problem I've got is that the Galaxy Nexus isn't going to be giving me all that much in terms of storage space at 16gb (current Nexus One is at about 14.5GB of space filled) and the whole no USB mass storage bit. If I'm looking to upgrade the handset are there any new phones coming out that look particularly good that I should think about holding out for or just bite the bullet and get something now? If the latter, what's the biggest benefit of going for the Galaxy over the S if I'm not hugely fussed about having a good screen for watching films on from time to time?

[schild]

JELLY BEAN ON MY NEXUS S!

[MuffinMan]

Is it helping your battery life? It doesn't look like Sprint is rolling it out yet, as usual.

[Jherad]

My wife decided she wants a 16gb Nexus 7 at about the same time as the rest of the world apparently. 

She's going to drive me crazy if they don't reopen the store soon.

[eldaec]

Is anyone aware of any practical solution for data roaming in the US?  Vodaphone want to charge about $5/Mb for roaming data, so they can fuck right off, and as far as I can tell nobody does flat fee deals because the US has turned into Soviet Russia or something.

The rest of the world seems to have gotten over this bullshit. In Africa where roaming is also difficult I can just pick up a 3G SIM card from a newsagent for about ten cents and put a few dollars credit on it - I am told (but find it hard to believe) that this is not possible in the US. Is the United States of America as technologically advanced as Africa, because as far as I can tell it is not?

Is it helping your battery life? It doesn't look like Sprint is rolling it out yet, as usual.

On my Galaxy Nexus I noticed it helped, but only a little. If you're having trouble on ICS I suspect it is one or more of your apps that is the problem.

[eldaec]

Please disregard the rant above - it turns out that telco call centre employees are useless fucks unaware of their own company's products.

Though I am interested in whether it is really the case that you can't pick up a PAYG 3G sim in a 7-11 because of corporate bullshit?

[Chimpy]

The US wireless market is fucking terrible and anything the rest of the world expects to be able to find is effectively nowhere to be found. (Especially because there are only 2 GSM networks, and the largest one is AT&T who is the worst in terms of assrape for cash).

[JWIV]

Google Now is absolutely damn awesome.  I had thrown an appointment in my calendar (complete with an address) and this morning, I get a Google Now alert letting me know what time I needed to leave the house to arrive on time.  That's super slick.

[MuffinMan]

Anyone here using T-Mobile prepaid for their $30/month unlimited data? My Sprint contract is up in a couple weeks and spread out over two years it looks like buying a Galaxy Nexus from Google for $350 and using T-Mobile pre-paid is by far the best bang for my buck.

[Quinton]

Anyone here using T-Mobile prepaid for their $30/month unlimited data? My Sprint contract is up in a couple weeks and spread out over two years it looks like buying a Galaxy Nexus from Google for $350 and using T-Mobile pre-paid is by far the best bang for my buck.

Several friends of mine have been using this plan and have been very happy with it.  It's what I'd choose if work didn't cover my cellular service at the moment.

[cmlancas]

So ice cream sandwich is the bees knees.  Just got upgraded on my Droid 4 and

[MahrinSkel]

Well, my eldest daughter decided to buy my youngest the 7-inch version of the Coby tablet for her birthday (next Tuesday).  I've managed to get Google Play working on it (after bricking it twice), and I'm looking for some advice on a media player to put on it.  I tried VLC for Android, but unless I'm missing something it just acts as a remote control for a VLC instance on another machine.

It needs to be fairly simple, since it's going to be operated by a 4 year old, but she's already comfortable with touch interfaces and she manages to pick particular videos out of a text list on her LeapPad Tablet, so it doesn't have to be typical pre-schooler simple.  Just something that will let her navigate through her videos and will play them.  If I have to convert them to a particular format/codec, I'm okay with that (already been through it with her LeapPad).  Can anyone help me out?

--Dave

EDIT: BTW, it seems to handle x264 720P video just fine.  My only complaint on that score is that the built-in speaker doesn't seem to put out much volume, I may have to cut a hole in the back of the case to keep it from being muffled into silence.

EDIT2: I eventually settled on Mobo, although it had trouble with some obscure codecs on my phone, x264, Xvid, and DivX are all supported in hardware and that covers about 95% of the videos out there, for anything else I can fire up Handbrake or Freemake and do the conversion myself.  The gallery-style menu should be easy for her to handle, although it could get unwieldy if there were a lot of small files (like music videos or cartoon shorts).  It doesn't seem to support grouping those into folders, which is a bummer.

[luckton]

Soooooo....how about that Apple/Samsung verdict?  I mean, damn, what else can you with a smartphone when Apple's been declared the sole proprietor of all the cool effects and finger-interactions?

[Surlyboi]

[Quinton]

I'm quite confident that Apple's quest to destroy competition in this space through litigation will ultimately fail, but it certainly won't be from lack of trying on their part.  

Some interesting observations about this case over on groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390

Unlike the Oracle/Google case, where the jury spent some serious effort trying to understand the complexities of the issues involved, these guys apparently decided they didn't even need to read the instructions from the court to fill out the crazy complicated verdict form.  That's kinda nuts.

[Velvin Hogan] was jury foreman. He had experience. He owned patents himself. In the beginning the debate was heated, but it was still civil. Hogan holds patents, so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there before Apple.

"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down." ...

[Surlyboi]

I'm quite confident that Apple's quest to destroy competition in this space through litigation will ultimately fail, but it certainly won't be from lack of trying on their part.  

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means..."

[MahrinSkel]

BTW, the problem with volume wasn't with the speaker on the Coby, but with the low volume levels typical of DVD rips.  I'm currently running all her movies through Handbrake to raise audio gain 6 to 9 dB (should finish up about 6 hours before it's technically her birthday).

--Dave

EDIT: While I'm at it, I'm reducing the 720P rips to 400 pixels or less high, and reducing audio quality down to simple mono.  Means those videos are of reduced usefulness on other devices, but I already had an extra set of resampled videos for her LeapPad (which had a tiny screen resolution and needed XVid codec), these are just replacing those.

[Yegolev]

I think it's time to mod the RAZR.  VZW has added too much lately.  Wondered if I could get some opinions on mods.  I need reliability.

[Salamok]

Soooooo....how about that Apple/Samsung verdict?  I mean, damn, what else can you with a smartphone when Apple's been declared the sole proprietor of all the cool effects and finger-interactions?

South Korea had the only sane response to all this shit by banning the sale of both phones.

[MahrinSkel]

Just an update on the Coby: Reports are that there are serious problems with the 10.1" version, including being completely unable to run Google Play on it, and locking up to the point that only letting the battery run out lets you boot it up again.  The 7" for my youngest daughter continues to work perfectly.  I'll keep looking for a <$200 10" tablet to use for couch-surfing.

--Dave

[MahrinSkel]

Interesting article at VentureBeat about the current state of Android tablets in China: Cheap as dirt.  Retailing at $45 for current-generation 7-inch tablets.  Article is really about how this means there's no room for margin for hardware manufacturers (they have to add value somehow) and tablets this cheap means they can be applied to a wide variety of situations that have been resistant to automation because PC's were too bulky and expensive (restaurants where every waiter has a tablet, for example).

My daughter will be a bit ahead of the curve in having a full-fledged tablet that's been "dumbed down" to the point that it isn't confusing for a pre-schooler, but I think it's pretty clear that we have reached a watershed of sorts: The next generation of kids isn't just going to have always had computers around, many of their earliest memories will involve actually *using* one.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around what that will mean.

If Apple doesn't introduce a toddler version of the Apple soon, they may find that their future consumers were "branded" to Android in the cradle.

--Dave

[eldaec]

I know plenty of parents that let their toddler play with their iPad.

Insert joke about apple products being pre-dumbed down here.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Can anyone explain why every time I restart my phone, it decides to turn the default notification sound back on?  I really don't need to hear that stupid droid sound effect each time an email hits the Gmail servers.  No, really, I don't.  I'm fine with the sound notification I've chosen for when the email actually hits my phone inbox. 

And oh yeah, screw you Android for not wanting to play nice with my Hotmail account.  Sometimes it refreshes and tells me I have mail, sometimes it doesn't.

[cmlancas]

lol hotmail.

People really still use that?