Android!

[Tale]

Thinking of picking up a Huawei Ideos (cheap as dirt Chinese-made Android phone, but with good reviews) this afternoon, just to play with Android. They're selling (unlocked from provider) for $199 here in Sydney.

[Ingmar]

I think Dave may be a bit optimistic on pricing (at least as far as decent devices with decent build quality), but his "wait six months" is spot on.  There are a *lot* of OEMs working on honeycomb based tablet devices and there should be a good variety of them on the market the second half of this year -- some possibly sooner depending on aggressiveness of the OEMs.

But I want to fill it with RPG PDFs now. 

[Koyasha]

Hah, that is exactly the kind of thing I would buy a tablet for.  I hate touching my physical 2nd Edition books, and if I ever need to use them often again (I hope, someday) the tablet format will make it unnecessary to risk damaging them.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Two of the guys in my gaming group use their iPads for character sheets/books and one has all the spells loaded in his iTouch.  That bit is awesome because it makes it so much easier to quickly look up spells by class/domain/level.  I'd love to have a tablet to use for that sort of thing.  The only thing I don't care for is one of the guys uses a dice rolling app instead of real dice and that takes away from the fun.  Sure, you can roll 4d6+2 much more quickly, but real dice...

[Salamok]

Two of the guys in my gaming group use their iPads for character sheets/books and one has all the spells loaded in his iTouch.  That bit is awesome because it makes it so much easier to quickly look up spells by class/domain/level.  I'd love to have a tablet to use for that sort of thing.  The only thing I don't care for is one of the guys uses a dice rolling app instead of real dice and that takes away from the fun.  Sure, you can roll 4d6+2 much more quickly, but real dice...

I don't think I would let anyone use a dice app, to easy to write yer own and load em up.

[Trouble]

Two big mobile conferences are happening this month. Mobile World Congress on 14-17 and CTIA 22-24. Between the two I'd expect most phone and tablet releases happening in the next 4-6 months to be previewed at to some degree.

My AT&T contract is up in a month and I'm sitting on an iphone 3g. Despite being a computer/gadget geek I've neglected to update my phone since I'm at an actual computer nearly all the time. The last round of Android handsets in January were pretty much unimpressive, after having done a fair bit of research. The new batch is faster due to a bit more ram and the next generation of their respective processor line, and a few are tossing in "4g" support. Not to seem too entitled about it, and better performance is always appreciated, but I was hoping for a bit more. In retrospect I was probably expecting too much of Q1 and Q2 releases.

Each of the phones on my "maybe" list suffers from a serious drawback/flaw requiring compromise. I know this is almost always true, but I still want to complain.

[Jeff Kelly]

MWC was FEBRUARY the 17th to 20th. Just FYI

[Trouble]

Fuck. Come on CTIA let's make some shit happen. How about SOMETHING built on 3rd gen Snapdragon.

[Quinton]

MSM8x60 is pretty nice.   First dual-scorpion design, faster, and a much more powerful GPU than 8x50/7x30/8x55.  There are definitely folks with designs based on that in the works.  Not sure if anyone's shipping midyear, but it could certainly happen.

At the moment, though, a 1GHz ARMv7 with 512MB ram runs Android Gingerbread extremely well at WVGA resolutions.  The dual-core stuff with fancier GPUs becomes more interesting for designs pushing to QHD/DVGA or beyond.

[Tale]

Thinking of picking up a Huawei Ideos (cheap as dirt Chinese-made Android phone, but with good reviews) this afternoon, just to play with Android. They're selling (unlocked from provider) for $199 here in Sydney.

Picked one up for $99. New, unlocked. Android 2.2 phone, capacitive touchscreen, wi-fi, GPS, all for $99.

[sigil]

Just picked up a nook color. I am enjoyimg the fact that you can mod the shit out of it. Currently running honeycomb which is very nice indeed.

[Trouble]

CTIA weee. The Sprint thing is in 25 minutes, Evo 3d incoming. The thing is a beast. http://www.engadget.com/tag/CTIAWireless2011/

[fuser]

Evo 3d incoming.

Amazing:

• 1.2GHz dual-core processor
• 4.3-inch qHD -- 960 x 540 3D display
• Android 2.3
• Capture and watch video in 3D, no glasses required(record via dual 5 megapixel rear facing cameras)
• HDMI-out and DLNA capability
• WiMAX
• 1730mAh Li-Ion battery
• Mobile hotspot capability for up to 8 devices

[El Gallo]

Can anyone recommend an extended battery for my droid X?

[Trippy]

Dancing mascot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTUwqxHpXMY

[KallDrexx]

Can anyone recommend an extended battery for my droid X?

I can't speak specifically for the Droid X, but I've had extended batteries for 2 different phones from Seidio and they have all worked well. 

[Yegolev]

Unless something great happens before August, I think I'm getting a Thunderbolt in July.

[Trouble]

Unless something great happens before August, I think I'm getting a Thunderbolt in July.

Why not Evo 3d? The only reason I can see would be Verizon which is understandable depending where you live and how much you travel.

[Yegolev]

You got it, I needs me some Verizon.  Where does Verizon suck?  Around here it beats the fucking shit out of AT+T and Sprint.

[Quinton]

VZW's network is pretty awesome.  Their pricing is relatively steep, though.

[MahrinSkel]

VZW's network is pretty awesome.  Their pricing is relatively steep, though.

Ditto.  I've found it hard to find places I can't get an acceptable 3G signal from Verizon (other than underground or deep inside a reinforced concrete building), but it costs a lot more.

--Dave

[Yegolev]

I'm supposed to be in a LTE area, which is nice.

[Trouble]

We have awesome sprint wimax here in Raleigh NC and I rarely travel so it's an easy decision for me. Thunderbolt supposedly has atrocious battery problems. I mean the Evo 4g is pretty shit to begin with but Thunderbolt and LTE bring it to a whole new level. A very poor decision for the Thunderbolt is the ridiculously small battery at like 1350mHa. The 1730mHa in the Evo 3d should help there as well.

I'm wondering if lessons learned from Evo 4g will result in better efficiency for the Evo 3d. The Evo 4g and Thunderbolt both represent first gen releases for those modem types so I have to imagine there's room for improvement.

[Quinton]

I don't think we're going to see significantly better 4G battery life until pure-LTE solutions ship.

Right now Verizon requires CDMA+LTE (two radios) and Sprint requires CDMA+WiMax (two radios).  These dual radio solutions just are not terribly good for battery and there's not a ton that can be done to improve that.

[snowwy]

Quinton, did your guys ever figuere out the .init-bug, or is that a "feature" now   

[RhyssaFireheart]

Found out that Verizon's LTE coverage in my area (Chicago NW Suburbs) ends less than a half mile to the east of my house.   

Still wanting to get an Android phone when the husband can upgrade in May (I'm eligilbe now) and I'm slowly bringing him around.  Anything on the horizon to be interested in by then?  I

[Salamok]

I don't think we're going to see significantly better 4G battery life until pure-LTE solutions ship.

Right now Verizon requires CDMA+LTE (two radios) and Sprint requires CDMA+WiMax (two radios).  These dual radio solutions just are not terribly good for battery and there's not a ton that can be done to improve that.

Does verizon's cdma+lte allow you to utilize data and voice concurrently?

[Yegolev]

I can do data+voice at the same time right now (weeeell, pretty sure, I don't normally surf+talk), so I would hope so.

I read about the battery complaints but I didn't see any phone I was interested in which didn't have someone complaining about battery life.  I'm just going to have to hope for some intelligent battery management in software; I understand there isn't a manual switch.  Fact is that my Moto Droid is having a tough time with the current state of OS+apps, so I really need a CPU upgrade.  I remember that I had some serious battery concerns when I first got it, but these have been mitigated over time so that it can almost stay charged as long as my VZW Blackberry.

[Zetor]

Battery life issues are part of the smartphone charm. Back In The Day™ my Nokia E51 with its 1000mha battery could go for a week+ with one charge (making/receiving calls, browsing the internet occasionaly, etc). My HTC Desire goes for 2-3 days tops (with lighter use, even -- and yeah, I don't have any crap running in the background).

[Yegolev]

If you believe the power consumption readings, the display consumes most of the battery.

[Quinton]

Does verizon's cdma+lte allow you to utilize data and voice concurrently?

Yes, but so does a pure LTE solution, or a modern pure UMTS solution.

[Quinton]

If you believe the power consumption readings, the display consumes most of the battery.

For the screen-on case, the display and backlight (if TFT) tend to be the most significant consumers.  The radio actually draws more power instantaneously but thankfully not constantly.

For standby time, the radio is the biggest issue (unless you have some app waking your phone up regularly).

Given a typical smartphone, with a 1500mAh battery, average current draw scenarios look a bit like this:

airplane mode (phone asleep, no radios) - 2mA - 750 hours standby
radio on but no data connection - 5mA - 300 hours standby
radio on, data connection, light sync traffic - 20mA - 75 hours standby
...
display on, cpu idle, no interaction - 150mA - 10 hours as a digital picture frame
radio, gps, display, gpu, cpu running pretty hard (maps/navigate while in motion) - 600mA - 2.5 hours operation

Exact power consumption will vary from model to model, based on which technologies are used and how efficient their implementation is (some devices have a baseline power draw that gets down to 1.2mA for example).  The above sketches out some of the best case and worst case scenarios for power consumption.

[Yegolev]

And since I use GPS in the car, I'm not terribly worried about it.  Thunderbolt seems a fine device.

[pohsyb]

Anyone want to buy T-Mobile G2?  New job and company provided phone means I don't need it anymore (bonus I have 2 charge cords and an extra battery)

[rattran]

My Droid was seeming sluggish, clocking it to 800 and ditching swype seems to have fixed it. I looked at the thunderbolt,  but no Hdmi and a weenie battery have taken it off my interest list.