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Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10…now kind of like the iPod line

February 14th, 2010

I’m lying on the floor watching the Olympics with a stomach full of vindaloo and a post-prandial coffee in my hand.

I’ve got to tell you…I’m kind of glad that I’m not in Barcelona right now.

Though I did really want to go to GSMA’s Mobile World Congress 2010, the exciting announcements so far haven’t been anything extremely shocking.

The first noteworthy announcement today was that Sony Ericsson’s first Android device, the gorgeous Xperia X10, is now the parent a full family of devices. The new members of the Sony Ericsson Android family include the X10 mini and X10 mini pro. It’s a bit like the iPod line now, you’ve got the full-sized version, and the miniature ones (one with keyboard, one without, lots of color choices.) Not a bad way to go, actually.

Here’s the features and stats right from Sony Ericsson:
Timescape UI
“Four corner control”
5 megapixel camera and video
QWERTY keyboard – slide and text for quick and easy messaging (Mini pro only)
X10 mini and X10 mini pro support HSPA 900/2100 and EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, HSPA 850/1900/2100 and EDGE 850/900/1800/1900.

Xperia X10 mini:
Size: 83 x 50 x 16 mm
Weight: 88 grams
Phone memory: Up to 128MB
Memory card support: SanDisk microSD, up to 16 GB
Memory card included: 2GB
Operating system: Google Android 1.6
Processor: 600 MHz Qualcomm MSM7227
Talk time GSM/GPRS: Up to 4 hours
Standby time: GSM/GPRS: Up to 285hrs
Talk time UMTS: Up to 3.5 hours
Standby time: UMTS: Up to 360 hrs
The X10 mini will be available in selected markets from Q2 in Pearl White, Black, Pink, Lime, Red and Silver


Xperia X10 mini pro:
Size: 90 x 52 x 17 mm
Weight: 120 grams
Phone memory: Up to 128MB
Memory card support: SanDisk microSD, up to 16 GB
Memory card included: 2GB
Operating system: Google Android 1.6
Processor: 600 MHz Qualcomm MSM7227
Talk time GSM/GPRS: Up to 4 hours
Standby time: GSM/GPRS: Up to 285hrs
Talk time UMTS: Up to 3.5 hours
Standby time: UMTS: Up to 360 hrs

The X10 mini pro will be available in selected markets from Q2 in Black and Red.

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Keeping up with the Androids

January 15th, 2010

Since I’ve now handled almost all of the following devices, I decided to re-do my “140 characters” list and just do a simple rundown of every Android phone with pictures. We’re going to see a lot more at Mobile World Congress. I really want to go, but it’s a little expensive, and I’ve got about 5 trips coming up that are going to be expensive. I also really really really want a Sony Vaio X Signature Series (VPCX115KX/S)…but that’s $1,589.99. money.

RELEASED/CONFIRMED:

G1
G1 (HTC Dream) This is the phone that started it all one year ago: Keyboard, Chin, Trackball, Slider, and Android 1.0

MyTouch3G
Mytouch3G (HTC Magic) , (Dopod) It’s still got the chin, but no keyboard. Shellable, skinnable, endorsed by Whoopi.

HTC Hero
HTC Hero (World) Slim and sexy, this is the first ‘droid with a custom UI #HTCSense The CDMA version is Sprint’s first Android device.

HTC Tattoo
HTC Tattoo yet another all-touch device with HTC Sense bound for Europe. Mysteriously ditched the “chin” but went with custom shells.

HTC Droid Eris
HTC Droid Eris (HTC Desire) Launch partner of Verizon Droid, standard 528MHz CPU, very similar to the Hero.


HTC Nexus One  Sold directly through Google, all-touch, 1GHz Snapdragon, cross-carrier, world phone. Very controversial and reputed to have some problems, but otherwise a totally compelling device.


Motorola Cliq/Dext the first Android phone from Moto, which unveiled MotoBLUR, the second big UI premiered for Android. Thanks to the timing of the big data loss of 2009, this became a replacement for many Sidekicks.

Motorola Droid
Motorola Droid aka “Sholes,” “Tao,” and “Touchstone.” QWERTY slider as thin as an iPhone. VZW’s first Android and first Android 2.0 (eclair) device. A killer.

Motorola Backflip
Motorola Backflip, aka “Enzo,” a weird form factor with keyboard on back of chassis and trackpad behind the screen, also rocks the MotoBLUR interface.


Motorola MotoROI, First released in China and South Korea, this powerful device features 720p video capture with HDMI output and has a fully-featured 8 Megapixel camera. Rumors say it’ll be released in the U.S. also.


Huawei U8220 aka T-mobile Pulse, the first prepaid all-touch Android device “perfect entry level smartphone”


Huawei U8230 3.2 megapixel camera on the back, VGA cam on the front, update to the T-Mobile Pulse.


LG inTouch MAX (GW620) aka “Etna” this QWERTY slider was launched in EU, turned up unlocked in France €450, and is now available in the UK on Virgin and T-Mobile.


LG GT540, don’t know the name of this one, but is all-touch, runs 2.0, and comes in various colours. Launched at CES, coming to EU/Asia


Acer A1 or Acer Liquid, like Motorola, Acer said it’s focusing on Android now. Launched UK 10/14, runs Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.


Dell mini 3i, one of China Mobile’s first Ophones, rumored to be AT&T’s first Android phone, we’ll have more. Dell is good with staying in touch.


Lenovo O1, another TD-SCDMA Ophone for China. Pretty, but not likely to come to the U.S.


Samsung Galaxy, @I7500, typical Samsung quality display, all-touch AMOLED with light sensor, not a “Google phone,” available in Germany, Austria, and Poland.


Samsung Behold 2, shown with #TouchWiz #Cube UI, will be first Samsung droid phone in US on T-Mobile


Samsung Moment, thought to be the #InstinctQ, this 800Mhz QWERTY monster came to Sprint and is being test marketed as an ATSC TV.


Samsung Galaxy Spica @I5700, 800MHz CPU, 3.2-inch HVGA, a 3mpix cam, 180MB internal memory. Actually quite dull. Announced on Nov 16.

@GeeksPhoneONE QWERTY slider available in EU (Spain) in December “extremadamente ágil y eficiente!”

@SaygusV1 Their V1 has 2-way video calling and is a huge, heavy monster of a phone


Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, comes with slick UI and new “UX Platform,” powered by Snapdragon. SE is forgoing the Android praise and just sticking with making phones. This thing is big and burly, it’s one of 2 I still haven’t played with yet.

UNCONFIRMED:

@MotorolaDevour aka @Calgary…the name has shown up for 2 years, and only recently has any actual evidence shown up.  We’ll see at CES!

@MotorolaHeron or @IronMan This Windows Mobile phone was pulled from AT&T, listed as “specifications subject to change due to move to Android.” Whereabouts unknown.

@MotorolaZeppelin Spotted in China in a regulatory filing, with not much known besides 5Mpx camera, and HDMI output

@MotorolaOpusOne – Supposed to be the first iDen Android Device, to ship with 1.5, 3.1″ screen, 3 megapixel cam—looking cheap

@TMobile “Tap” shown on the Samsung Behold II launch paper…possibly a #ZTE device?

@INQ committed to an Android device, but we haven’t seen anything yet.

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Posted in Android, hardware

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Love

December 31st, 2009

In my modest Facebook friend group, the holiday season turned 5 more of my friends into Android users.  Interestingly, it’s not because of my influence (I don’t think.)

I mean, I don’t push these things. Well…not hard at least.

I’m quite certain it’s more due to Android’s broad appeal, because none of these friends know each other, they all lead very different lifestyles,  they all got different phones, and yet they’re all very happy.

This pleases me because it illustrates the versatility of the platform and the appeal of the existent hardware.

Part of their happiness is probably gadget-related euphoria, but I have a feeling it isn’t much. I just wanted to share with you some of the fun posts I’ve seen from these people as I gear up for the 14 hour drive back to Baltimore from St. Louis and 8 hour flight to Vegas from Baltimore.

Droid phone in meeting = win

at 9:10am via Facebook for Android

· Comment · Like 2 people like this.

[comment] Yay!! Droids rock!!

at 10:18am

[comment] did you get one too?

at 10:32am

[comment] Hey I gotta droid too! By the way…..why did the Steelers lose to he browns?

at 11:56am

[comment] Well, I have a G1 from t-moble… it was the first android phone… i love it!!

at 11:59am

And then there’s…

I love my fiphone, (fake iphone) Tue at 10:27pm via MOTOBLUR™

One more announced how he got the Hero (but was having network-related SMS issues), one got the Eris, and another got his entire family MyTouch3Gs.   These are all what I’d call “regular people,” too, with non-techie jobs or hobbies. I like that non-fanboy types post excited messages about Android to each other. Happy New Year, everybody!

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Posted in Android, Lifestyle

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What to expect for Android at CES 2010

December 28th, 2009

I’ll be at CES for Betanews again this year, and in addition to BN reporting and lending a hand on the Plan8 Podcast, I’ll be singling out Android goodies in my usual fashion.  To simultaneously whet your appetitie for next week, and help me remember the booths to visit, here are some of the Android drops I’ll be looking for in the miles of floorspace at CES:

  1. Notion Ink  Android Tablet (with Pixel Qi “transflective” display and nvidia Tegra GPU)
  2. Snapdragon-powered (1GHz) Devices (Passion/Nexus One/more)
  3. Qualcomm’s newest mobile chipsets
  4. LG Prada 3 or other devices from LG
  5. MIPS/ Tensilica System-on-a-Chip for Android-powered audio devices
  6. Rumored Dell Android Tablet, pretty much anything Android from Dell
  7. Saygus Vphone - the CES Innovation award-winning 2-way video phone running Android
  8. A ton more devices from HTC (Legend? All those from that supposed leaked roadmap) and Motorola (Backflip, Calgary, etc?)
  9. Nvidia Tegra 2
  10. More platform-defining apps, possibly from Google…but not necessarily.

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I’m not visually impaired, what’s TalkBack good for?

December 12th, 2009

When we first saw Android 1.6 (donut) long long ago, we heard about the accessibility features afforded by the text-to-speech engine made by SVOX.  By default, your donut device doesn’t have the speech libraries loaded, and you have to add them yourself.  Eclair-based devices such as the Motorola Droid, however, come with the speech function fully loaded and ready to rock.

To turn it on, go to Menu> settings > accessibility, click on the “accessibility” checkbox, and then click on the “TalkBack” checkbox.  A warning box pops up telling you that it will read things such as credit card numbers aloud and that it “may be able to collect the data you type, ” so be careful..

When you have TalkBack turned on, all it really does is verbally tell you where you are, such as the home screen, sub-menus or URLs.  It also reads pop-up messages and warnings, but that’s the limit of it.

But I started thinking the other day that maybe TalkBack could come in handy if I could highlight text and have it read aloud, sort of like what you can do on many Kindle books, and what you can do with Speech in OS X.   Since I have to edit other people’s documents for work, I’m always using speech.  I even have a macro set up to highlight all text in this one field and automatically launch the voice reader.  So yeah, I thought it would be cool to have TalkBack read my Google News or Techmeme headlines to me as I’m driving or walking the dog or something.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a solution that doesn’t require the installation of another application.  I try to highlight and copy text with menu-e on the Droid, which then copies my selection to the clipboard.  But then I have no access to the clipboard to read my selection.

So what the hell…I downloaded Talking RSS Reader by Google Engineer Stephanie Doyon, which integrates with Google Reader.   It doesn’t use the nice built-in Android reader voice, but the Linux text-to-speech voice which I now equate with the dumb smiley face on the OLPC “Speak” program.  I got my niece an XO-1 for Christmas last year, and she spent quite a lot of time playing with the Speak app, making it just go “fhfhahfhfhehehehehnfmsisisisioep” and such…over and over and over.

"fhfhaeieieuwysofifio!"

This is the guy I picture reading my RSS feeds in Talking RSS Reader. Or more accurately, I picture him reading every single bit of text in every article in my feed in order.  When you use this app, half of the time it’s going to be saying things like “image link, image link, image link,  image link, image link”  and other such useless info that I don’t want to hear. It’s the worst in blogs because it reads all the usernames, link names, comments, and stuff.   Talking RSS reader is free and alright, but it’s better for reading the full text of articles in sequential order rather than just reading headlines.  I want something that will just speak all the headlines to me in a clear voice, and have speech recognition so I can say something like “read that one!” and it will stop its listing and drill down into the article I chose.  That kind of app would be awesome for commuters, and I guess I have to continue my search.

Talking RSS reader crashed on me quite a few times when I was playing with it, but it didn’t ever throw up an error message.  The app just silently closed, which I guess is kind of less annoying, but still bad.  I won’t uninstall this yet, as I intend to use it in the car, but it’s really not quite what I had in mind.

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Android 2.0 features unveiled!

October 27th, 2009

Today, Android SDK Tech lead Xavier Ducrohet announced Android 2.0 support in the SDK, which unveils some of the big capabilities in the latest version of Android, expected to hit the market soon on at least one of Verizon’s upcoming “Droid” devices. In the developer video posted today, for instance, all the new features were shown off on a device connected to the Verizon network, and the release notes say it will be deployable in November.

The keyword with Eclair is interoperability.

Motorola recently launched its custom Android build with a UI called MotoBLUR, the central function of which is the ability to integrate with a user’s many social web services from a single interface. The new APIs included in Eclair give this communicative function to all developers. So with the new Account Manager API, developers can centrally store account credentials on the device, the Contacts application can now sync and aggregate contact data from multiple accounts, and the Sync Adaptors API provides full two-way contact sync with ANY backend.

To provide a single, unified face for this data, the Quick Contact function has been added. By clicking on a contact’s picture, a user can pull up a menu of all the different ways to reach that contact…Gmail, Email, IM, Phone, and the various Social networks. It’s like the existent “live folder” concept for contacts, but brought together under the standard contact list, or in any app the developer chooses.

Android 2.0 also updates the Bluetooth API so apps can now access Bluetooth controls to discover, connect and share information with nearby devices, which unlocks the ability to make peer-to-peer and proximity-based applications.

The built-in Android browser has been updated with a refreshed UI with an actionable address bar, bookmarks sorted by thumbnail, double-tap zoom command, and HTML5 support, which opens up Application cache, client-side SQL databases, geolocation API support, and fullscreen video tag support.

The camera app has again been tweaked, but this time it includes digital zoom (with macro mode), built-in color effects (posterize, solarize, etc) and built-in flash support.

It even adds Exchange Support and includes Multi-touch support for the soft keyboard.

Throw this out there with the upcoming availability of Verizon Droids, the Sony Racheal, and whatever else is coming out, and we’ve got a really huge quarter for Android. I’m gonna start doing video blogs soon, it just takes a bit longer to write and record them.

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A thought-provoking view of Android from Symbian

October 24th, 2009

GigaOM struck gold with a video of Symbian’s Lee Williams criticizing Google for poisoning the well with its Android business model. It’s an absolute must-watch.
Here’s the meat of it, taken as a direct quote:

“First and foremost, the goal of a Google system would be to create a situation where you have information about the user and the use of…those cloud apps that are proprietary to Google. Secondarily, it would be to cookie them, so you get that unique identifier association with the data you’ve collected on the individual’s habits and routines, etc, so you can target apps toward them, so you can build more intelligent cloud-based apps for them and so forth. At the end of the day, what is the motivation for any other company in an Android ecosystem when in fact the consumers are being taken right away from them just in some of these simple concepts?”

“Android is building almost the perfect storm of fragmentation in a large marketplace, I don’t know how many different UIs are shipping and how many people claim to own them across the 18 devices in development. More than that, they continue to do the revenue share deals with the operators and leverage the benefit of these cookied consumers…how many different UIs and closed APIs you’re gonna end up with in that scenario becomes a very big question on how do you sustain and return on investments in that type of environment?”

“I don’t hate Android at all, I think it’s a great initiative. But what I think Google should do is come be a member of the Symbian Foundation and join a truly open ecosystem where anybody can come and sit on a council seat and determine the future of that system, instead of advertising that they have one and going in their own direction.”

…I stripped out the part where he calls Apple greedy and Google evil. That was a bit of a “sweeps week” comment, but Williams’ comment is nonetheless very interesting because he’s cutting Google down for building an open ecosystem that has a closed monetization scheme.

Then, talking about his relationship with handset makers like Samsung, HTC and Motorola, Williams said companies have come to him and said “…One of the issues I’ve got is that Google is taking my interface with my consumers away.”

Let’s see if I have this right…Google gives you the open source framework and shares the revenue and all it costs you is the user’s behavioral data? And in exchange, users get high-quality services for free?

What’s the problem, exactly?

I’m sure my view is oversimplifying it, and my knowledge of Symbian’s inner workings is poor. However, I do know that it’s very easy for a nonprofit organization to vilify a group that is working for profit as “greedy” or “evil,” especially when their customers are the exact same companies.

I guess that’s why he extended the invitation to join the foundation instead of a big old fuck off.

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Android’s first real e-reader was born today

October 20th, 2009

Never mind that bullshit about the Spring Design “Alex” yesterday. Total patent troll “prior art” move. The Barnes and Noble Nook is real and it’s making me drool.

I’m a Kindle 2 owner and fan. I love how easy it is to read, I love how thin and light it is, I love the free connection to Sprint’s “Now Network” (I wish you could add more quotes around a phrase to increase the sarcasm/attitude/cynicism) . Obviously, I’m also extremely focused on the Android operating system, ecosystem, and lifestyle. So nook really excites me.

I was tempted to rush out my first Android Bakery video podcast to talk about the nook. But I held off.

nook eReader - Android power

nook eReader - Android power

There’s no shortage of news about nook right now. I wrote about it on Betanews earlier today, saying that it somehow managed to combine the spirit of two most “walled garden” tech devices (iphone and kindle) to make a new, uber desirable device.

But the thing is, we don’t know where it fits in the Android family. I contacted B&N this afternoon to see if they could get me in touch with a developer who could explain, just how much of an Android device the nook really is, but I haven’t heard back from them yet. That’s how excited I am. I’m posting a story before I even have any useful info. Just check back, I’ll have something good.

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Aren’t you glad you’re an Android early adopter?

October 15th, 2009

If there’s one thing that Android Bakery is about, it’s giant foam pastries being dropped on Google’s lawn, and apparently the customary giant eclair has made its grand debut.

I’m going to make two predictions, one a longshot, one more logical.

Here are the factors adding up:

1.) Verizon’s Getting an Android phone (and we now know Eric Schmidt’s boner for Verizon)

2.) At the Google earnings call late in the day today, Eric Schmidt says, “Android adoption is about to explode.”

3.) …on the same day the giant Eclair lands?

Prediction one (longshot) Verizon is getting the first Android 2.0 phone.

I mean, they only released the Donut SDK last month…and we first heard about that in May. BUT if you remember, as I’m sure you do, they showed off all the Donut features at Google I/O not even one month after the big foam Cupcake dropped and all our G1s updated.

It’s too early in Android’s lifespan to be able to predict these kind of trends, but dropping a comically huge representation of the OS’s codename is about as obvious a hint as you could hope to receive. Something with Eclair is going to happen very soon.

What sucks is that we don’t know anything about Eclair, really. So that leads me to my second, and probably more likely prediction:

Verizon and AT&T will be getting their Android phones at the same time as Sprint and T-Mobile gets their new devices, summarily “exploding” the OS onto all United States carriers with four new devices…then after the five minutes of pants-pooping is over, and tons of new Android users are born, we’ll get to see an early build of Eclair to tease the new users with sick new upcoming features.

Also, Michael Arrington commented on the article I linked to above, saying he’s seen a new Android device that’ll “blow everyone away.” (I could have the quote wrong, but that’s the gist of it.) I’m hoping it’s Rachael from Sony Ericsson, because that looks really hot. But hell, it could be something even better.

All of this, combined with the daily media coverage making the “duh!” prediction that Android is on its way to market domination make it a very good time to be an Android early adopter, and everyone who’s going through the 528MHz generation right now has my personal permission to refer to himself as an “O.G.”

…or something less dorky.

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Android/Google backlash? Calm down.

September 26th, 2009

I’m coming from a casual/moderate open source user’s perspective with a question:

Are all serious FOSS advocates high strung ninnies?

In my career as a journalist, I’ve encountered more haywire open source reactionaries than I’d like to deal with, and I’ve really begun to regard the whole group as a bunch of paranoid freaks.

There’s this ideology that turns into a stouthearted set of beliefs that gets in the way of logical discourse. I liken it to political radicals who call everyone who isn’t throwing molotov cocktails at the police a “fascist sympathizer.”

What am I talking about here? If you’re an Android fan, you know Cyanogen. It’s a modded Android ROM which has basically been feeding the public all of Google’s software updates before Google has had a chance to officially release them to the public. Google has finally issued a cease and desist warning to Cyanogen’s developer –also going by the moniker Cyanogen– that he has to cut it out because he’s distributing stuff not included in the open source licensing. As Google said yesterday in its blog, “Unauthorized distribution of this software harms us just like it would any other business, even if it’s done with the best of intentions.”

Suddenly the open source reactionaries cry foul and mobilize a boycott of Android. To quote Phandroid’s article yesterday: “Google is basically moving the modding community from doing their work in the light to doing their work in the dark. Forget about getting ROMs on XDA-DEVS… Android builds are about to become torrents and warez.”

*sigh*

Can we please be civilized? I mean, you shouldn’t be surprised, Android has never been purely open source. Since it was first released last October, it has been a kind of hybrid licensing structure. There is the public development branch under the Apache 2.0 license and then stuff which is considered Google’s intellectual property which must be licensed out… I don’t know how minute the stuff that must be licensed is, and judging by the confusion of the community, the two may be too closely interwoven for many to discern where one ends and the other begins.

One commenter wrote: “The phones that are running Cyanogen’s ROMs ALREADY HAD THE GOOGLE APPS.”

However true this may have been in the past, in this case it is abundantly clear what the problem is. Cyanogen included the updated Android Market in his mod, which is fundamentally different from the app already on everybody’s phones, clearly crossing the line. In other words, the C&D is about Cyanogen distributing a closed-source app and not modding the Android platform.

What the community is getting upset over is that just because Google releases a free Android app, it does not mean it’s Free and Open Source. I’ve seen this throughout the message board commentary over the last few days. People assume that because YouTube, Gmail, Google Sync are not FOSS, that Android is now completely ruined.

The modding community is pissed because they now think this means they have access to basically none of Google’s awesome services, and HTC Sense and Motorola’s MOTOBLUR are illegal, and now they’re all abandoning the platform as tainted by corporate greed.

Now, I don’t know the ins and outs of the licensing structure, but it’s obvious that this reaction was way out of hand. I suggest we all sit down, pull the black bandannas off our faces and turn the talk about boycotts and protests into talk about what can and cannot be done with Android.

We don’t need Cyanogen to be a martyr for an insurrection.

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Posted in Android, Lifestyle

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