Posted: December 3rd, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Android, Lifestyle | Tags: account, accounts, add, add email, adding, aim, Android, att, device, droid, email, Eris, g1, handset, how do i, how to, htc, i, imap, live, motorola, my, mytouch3G, new, phone, pop3, questioins, questions, set up, setting, setup, t-mobile, up, user, verizon, what does, why can't, yahoo, yahoo email | Comments Off
"Drrrrrroooooid!"
(UPDATE: I originally wrote this for new Motorola Droid owners, but since I’ve answered many of these questions for other Android devices, I’ve changed it to be more far-reaching.)
For whatever reason, you bought the Motorola Droid a new Android phone; and you’re sitting there with no experience with the platform at all, no Earthly clue what can be done with your new phone, and a new two year contract saying you’ll hang onto it. You’ve heard people say how powerful it is, and how it’s comparable to the iPhone and blah blah blah. Let me just invite you to clear your mind of any preconceived notions, and fill it with these important things about Android that no one seems to talk about:
The Long Press is your most useful command
It seems like the most overlooked fact about Android: you can’t live without the long press. And if you’re new to the touchable OS, it’s not really an intuitive command. I mean, flip open an old RAZR, hold down a key and see what happens. But press and hold your finger on nearly anything in Android, and you get super important and useful results. Try it on the home screen and you get the “add to home screen” menu, which lets you put new app shortcuts, widgets, live folders, or change the wallpaper. If you want to get rid of the icons on your homescreen when you get your new device, just long press them and drag them to the trash can that appears on the bottom of your screen. Long press an email and you can open, delete, forward, reply/all, or mark as read; Long press a link in the browser, and you can open it in a new window, bookmark it, save it, share it or copy the URL. It is the single most useful command you have.
Long.
press.
everything.
The first place you must go is the “settings” menu
Find the menu button and push it, and then push “settings.” On the first Android phones, this was one of the most important things to do, so you could optimize performance and stretch out your battery life. It’s not quite as necessary to tweak the Droid in this way, because right out of the box you’ll find it is able to sustain a great deal of use without much lag and without battery slaughter. However, you absolutely must must must (impossible to overstress) familiarize yourself with the tweakability of Android 2.0 so if something bothers you, it can be changed.
I read an awful article today on Silicon Alley Insider about “The 10 Things we Love and Hate about the Droid, ” and most of their complaints could have been negated with conscientious use of the settings menu. You can turn haptic feedback off, you can adjust media and ringer volumes, you can turn off screen re-orientation, you can turn off screen auto-dimmer, and such. Most of their other complaints stemmed from the Droid’s differences from the iPhone. They concluded that it’s “not better than the iPhone.” Which is just retarded. It’s different, and you love your iPhone. Nobody fucking decides an interface or ecosystem is better right after switching to it.
After a few days of using your new Android phone, I highly suggest going to the settings menu, and then hitting “about phone,” and then “battery use.” It’s both eye-opening and hilarious. Chances are good that more than half of your battery power is consumed by the screen being on and a tiny fraction by the Android Operating System and apps. It makes for a strong argument in favor of electrophoretic displays (e-book/kindle screens.)
You don’t need iTunes, no, wait… FUCK iTUNES!
Harsh, yes…but anyone who tells you that Android is somehow inferior to iPhone OS because it “lacks sync” has obviously spent too much time with their iPods and iPhones. It amazes me that people actually believe the need to sync their devices is A POSITIVE THING?!?! If you have to take time to hook your computer up to your phone so all the files stay fresh and up-to-date, guess what…they are fundamentally out of sync. They are working in their own little worlds and must be strung together after the fact. That is an old way of doing things, and anyone who has owned a Palm Pilot or similar PDA will tell you, it is goddamn annoying and should be abolished.
Repeat after me:
Sync is not a positive feature.
The need for sync means incongruity is programmed into the device.
So if you’ve come to Android expecting an iPod, where your desktop and your handheld are in constant communion, you will be disappointed. Though there are ways to hook up the Droid with iTunes, I hope you will look at Android as a mobile portal to the Web and Web-based services, and not an extension of your lousy desktop and your pirated mp3s. Get used to this. Without network connectivity, most of your devices are probably pretty worthless, right? Your laptop can bear some heavy computational loads, and your workstation can do the serious powerlifting, but we don’t live in the supercomputer era of homebase power computing any more. Even the burliest teraflop setup would be considered crippled if it wasn’t connected to a larger-scale network. And our wimpy sub-1GHz mobile phone processors have helped this become a reality.
Besides, if you’re looking for music, Pandora (and to a lesser extent Slacker Radio) are the great equalizers. They’re free, “cloud-based,” and on Verizon, stream like magic. The network is, again, the power.
With all that being said, I’ll give you your next point.
Hook up with any email service (how-to)
My inbox receives my work email, gmail, aim/aol mail, yahoo mail, and windows live hotmail and so can yours. Here’s how you do it, in order of increasing difficulty.
Gmail: This is part of the device setup, and Gmail gets its own app. You’re walked through it, so this doesn’t even factor in, really.
Windows Live Hotmail: This is delightfully easy. Go to the email app, push the menu button, push “add account,” then type in your Live/Hotmail address and password, and you’re done.
Yahoo Mail: This is a bit more tricky. When you get to the “add account” part, you have to enter your Yahoo email name and password, but then hit “manual setup.” From here, (Incoming Server Settings) make the IMAP server “imap.mail.yahoo.com” and the Port is 143. In Outgoing Server Settings, set the SMTP Server to “smtp.mobile.mail.yahoo.com” and the Port to 587. Then, check “Require sign-in” and press Next.
AIM Mail This is almost identical to Yahoo, but just change the IMAP and SMTP server names to “imap.aim.com,” and “smtp.aim.com.” The ports are the same.
Others I highly encourage you to poke around, and try setting up connections to any Webmail accounts you have. And because the Droid is Exchange compatible, you can set up your work-related email accounts and calendars just as easily as you set up a Windows Live account. Just enter your username and password and it’s good to go.
Next: Apps in the “Verizon” directory in the Android Market and what’s so special about them.
Posted: October 27th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Android, api, camera, developer, eclair, g1, Google, htc, html5, LG, Mobile, motoblur, motorola, OS, screen, sholes, t-mobile, touch, touchscreen, update, verizon | 1 Comment »
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.
Posted: October 24th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Android, Google | Tags: alliance, Android, cookies, foundation, Google, handset, htc, linux, monetization, motorola, nokia, open, open source, operating system, samsung, symbian, uiq, user data | No Comments »
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.
Posted: October 5th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Android, hardware | Tags: 3g, a1, acer, Android, backflip, behold, behold II, calgary, cdma, cliq, cube, dell, dream, enzo, ericsson, Eris, etna, flan, g1, galaxy, Geeksphone, gw620, handsets, hero, htc, huawei, i7500, instinctq, lenovo, LG, liquid, magic, milestone, mini3i, moment, motorola, mytouch, nexus one, o1, one, ophone, phones, pulse, samsung, Saygus, sense, sholes, snapdragon, sony, t-mobile, tao, Tattoo, td-scdma, touchwiz, V1, verizon, xperia, zeppelin | 6 Comments »
More Android Phones keep comin’, so here’s a rundown of what we’ve got in the immortal language of Twitter. I’m going to keep updating this post as more devices come out, so #havenofear. After updating this a number of times, I’ve decided to organize this list by phones that have been released or announced first, then followed by rumored devices.
RELEASED/CONFIRMED:
@HTCDream, @TmobileG1 This is the phone that started it all one year ago: Keyboard, Chin, Trackball, Slider, and Android 1.0
@SamsungGalaxy, @I7500, typical Samsung quality display, all-touch AMOLED with light sensor, not a “Google phone,” avail in Germany, Austria, Poland
@HTCMagic, @Mytouch3G, @Dopod, It’s still got the chin, but no keyboard. Shellable, skinnable, endorsed by Whoopi.
@HTCHero (World) Slim and sexy, this is the first ‘droid with a custom UI #HTCSense The CDMA version is Sprint’s first Android device.
@HTCTattoo yet another all-touch device with #HTCSense bound for Europe. Mysteriously ditched the “chin” but went with custom shells.
@HTCDroidEris, @HTCDesire Launch partner of Verizon Droid, standard 528MHz CPU, very similar to the Hero
@HTCNexusOne Sold directly through Google, all-touch, snapdragon, very controversial.
@MotorolaCliq, @MotorolaDext first Android phone from Moto, features #MotoBLUR, second big UI for droid. Surefire Sidekick replacement.
@MotorolaDroid aka @sholes aka @tao aka @touchstone. QWERTY slider as thin as an iPhone. #VZW’s first Android and first Android 2.0 (eclair) device. A killer.
@MotorolaBackflip, aka @Enzo, a weird form factor with keyboard on back of chassis and trackpad behind the screen, also rocks #motoBLUR
@TmobilePulse, #Huawei makes this, the first prepaid all-touch Android device “perfect entry level smartphone”
@LG GW620, @LGEtna this QWERTY slider was launched in EU, turned up unlocked in France €450. lacks d-pad/trackball but has arrow keys.
@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
@AcerA1, @AcerLiquid, like #Moto, #Acer said it’s focusing on Android now. Launched UK 10/14, runs Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.
@Dellmini3i, one of #ChinaMobile’s first Ophones, rumored to be AT&T’s first Android phone, we’ll have more. Dell is good with staying in touch.
@LenovoO1, another TD-SCDMA Ophone for China. Pretty, but not likely to come to the U.S.
@SamsungBehold2, shown with #TouchWiz #Cube UI, will be first Samsung droid phone in US on T-Mobile
@SamsungMoment, thought to be the #InstinctQ, this 800Mhz QWERTY monster is headed for Sprint in Nov.
@SamsungGalaxySpica @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
@SonyEricsson 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.
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.
Posted: September 26th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Android, Lifestyle | Tags: Android, app, boycott, cyanogen, FOSS, Google, htc, market, mod, motoblur, motorola, open source, protest, rom, XDA | 3 Comments »
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.
Posted: September 10th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Android, cliq, dext, DroidLive, g1, glass, Google, hero, htc, iphone, listen, morrison, motoblur, motorola, palm, pandora, reasons, rosie, screen, slider, t-mobile, touch, why buy | 2 Comments »
AndroidGuys is a solid site.
Amid the hue and cry of today’s Motorola Android news, they’ve made a post saying “We want to hear what you think of the Motorola Cliq and MOTOBLUR.”
Well, I’ll tell you what attracts me to the Cliq in order of importance:
1.) Glass Screen–the G1′s screen is just too sticky. Glass has just enough friction to feel good, and it totally enhances the touch experience, not to mention adds stability to the entire unit.
2.) Boosted RAM–even though it’s only a minor bump, it’s totally something that will make a noticeable difference in day to day use.
3.) Solid Chassis– This is the only thing I consistently favor about the iPhone, and if this is anywhere in that neighborhood, the Cliq will have improved on all my biggest complaints about the G1.
4.) 3.5mm headphone jack–Self explanatory: I use the MP3 player, DroidLive, Listen, and now Pandora and I DESPISE the usb headset. I will dedicate a rant to this in the near future.
5.) Keyboard–it may not be as powerful as the HTCHero*, but it’s the second ‘droid phone on T-Mobile with a keyboard.
6.) Exclusive UI—Not that I particularly have a need for social networking 24 hours a day, but I am interested in the UI design since it’s been compared to HTC’s Rosie/SenseUI, which I totally dig.
Naturally, I want to handle it before I decide to buy it…but it’s beginning to look like this is what I’ll be picking up in the fall.
It’s not a phone to die for by any stretch, but it certainly would be an improvement over the G1, aside from the move from a trackball to a D-pad, which would only take a matter of time to get used to.
Posted: September 9th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Android, Lifestyle | Tags: Android, app, cellular, disorganized, facebook, g1, homescreen, htc, iphone, Mobile, open home, organize, palm, pandora, phone, pre, sense, shazam, store, t-mobile, twitter, ui, weather channel, widget, wxwidget | 1 Comment »
The problem of widget disorganization in Android has been approaching for some time. Now that many of the most popular apps come with widgets, I’m really beginning to feel the clutter on my homescreen. With today’s release of the official Pandora app and yesterday’s release of the official Facebook app, I now have two more medium/large widgets to deal with, and some reorganization to consider.
Pandora Widget, with some 2nd wave ska
I’ve reached the point where things have gotten ugly. With traditional icon-based apps, I can at least do a cohesive theme where everything is the same size and color and it matches the background. With non-themed widgets, though…I’m kind of at the mercy of the app’s designer.
Fortunately, I can add up to 7 more homescreens with Open Home, but anyone who’s dealt with a pack-rat will tell you that giving a hoarder more space doesn’t solve any problems, it just makes them harder to tackle.
I wouldn’t call myself a “widget hoarder,” but let’s see. In my “Add to Home Screen > Widgets” folder, I currently have: Analog Clock, Calendar, Facebook, Music, Open Home Big Analog Clock, Open Home Music, Open Home Setting Widget, Open Home Weather, Pandora, Picture Frame, Search, Tiny Clock Widget 2, Twidget Lite, Voice Text, Voicemail+ Large/Small, Weather Large/Small/Tiny, Weather Channel WxWidget Large/Small.
Do I really need SIX different weather widgets and three clocks? Not really, but you sometimes need to compare to get the best looking widgets that also provide the best results, plus it’s really only three in multiple sizes. The WxWidget actually isn’t my cup of tea, though it’s a super popular and handy app with more in-depth updates and alerts, but the Weather Widget by Lock2 is 100% better looking and gets the job done (I believe it’s designed after HTC Sense’s weather widget). It’s free too, but I highly advise floating a donation their way if you’ve got some change to spare.
Before I can even begin to think about organizing anything, I have to have a deep philosophical “chicken or egg” discussion with myself: Do services gain homescreen position because I use them more, or do I use them more because they’re on my homescreen? My homescreen is usually a bit of both. I use the weather widget a lot mostly because it’s there, not because I always care about the weather. Shazam is an app icon I feel like I always need on my homescreen, but I don’t use it nearly as much as, say, the Google Search bar, which I have relegated to a secondary screen. But really, I’ve started to feel like I don’t need app shortcuts any more with the way things are going. Everything I use pretty much resides in the “side drawer.”
It’s times like this that I wish there was a Widget “snap to” program, or a position randomizer, where I could just hit a button and have the widgets fit to a grid on my screen and I could decide if I liked it or not.
New Facebook widget with Twidget Lite
Because I prefer an uncluttered layout, I’ve switched to a five-screen layout where each screen serves a different purpose. The main screen has weather and calendar, the “music screen” has the Mp3 player and Pandora, the “feed screen” has Twitter and Facebook, the “utility screen” which right now only has the settings widget, and the “Google screen” only has the search widget right now, but anticipates the arrival of new homescreen toys from Google.
It’ll get the job done for now, but more widgets=more processes which ultimately means slowness. It’s running acceptably now, but we’ll see how things get bogged down in the real world. This is something we need to think about as Android users, since the elegant use of widgets is helping to make Android both stand out above icon-based smartphone interfaces, and run more efficiently for the user.
Posted: September 8th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: Android, hardware | Tags: Android, bar, blackberry, bold, cammo, camo, camouflage, candy, Candybar, capacitive, Click, Dash, dell, htc, igoogle, Ozone, resistive, slider, studio, Tattoo, touch, touchscreen, tribal, urban | No Comments »
In case you missed it today, HTC announced its fourth Android device, the “Tattoo” (which was formerly called “Click”.)
Everybody’s expecting it to be the cheapest Android phone yet, which is itself an exciting possibility, but I look at the device with absolute boredom.
I see you have a tattoo. You are 88% more likely to be a douchebag.
Design-wise, it’s HTC’s third all-touch Android phone in a row (if you don’t count local variations,) and the only unique thing it has going for it is its faceplate changeability.
Once you get into cosmetic “improvements” like that, I get extremely, violently, bored. Any time a company gets into the business of slapping prefabricated “art” on my tech devices, I want to give said company a flying axe handle to the head. I don’t want to see tribal tattoos or urban camouflage on ANYTHING much less on the device which I will prominently hold up to my face in public or have sitting on my lap for hours on end.
Get that shit away from me NOW.
Art-related stuff like Dell Studio notebooks and iGoogle skins I can get down with. Those prominently feature the artists’ names and are unique to their tastes and talents. There is absolutely nothing unique about the shit they’re slapping on the HTC Tattoo. Even the name offends me…I feel like that’s up there in bad names with Motorola Rokr. Why not just name it the HTC BAD BOYZ or something?
Furthermore, this gets into the realm of things that I hate: The separation of “Tattoo” from “Art.” But that’s a rant for a non-tech blog or a day where I have more time to bitch.
On a more fundamental level though, there’s another issue with the Tattoo.
Reportedly, it has been equipped with a resistive touchscreen to get to its lower pricetag. I know how sucky a bad resistive touchscreen can get. You ever use a Chumby? HA. They say you don’t need a stylus for it, but you just try setting an alarm on that thing without one. Resistive touchscreens make me think of business geeks with a coke nail that they grew to make interaction with their phone easier because they don’t want to have to whip out a stylus.
But this brings me to my main issue. I know quite well that Android is a touch OS; but when you’re a big company in the business of making internationally distributed consumer electronics devices, how hard would it be, really, to port Android down to a non-touch device if you’re just looking to save money? Rather than attempt to preserve the experience you’d get with a capacitive touchscreen, you just create a new button-based experience.
I’d love to see a BlackBerry-style Android device. HTC makes the Dash and the Ozone and they’re fantastically comfortable devices. I know..I know, I favor keyboards. I’m sorry. But I strongly believe that anyone who’s had to rely on a smartphone in a high-pressure work situation will agree with me: hard keys are needed for hard work.
We’ve got devices from Motorola coming this week, and some from LG on the horizon. They all at least have keyboards, but what I’m really looking for from HTC is something like the BlackBerry Bold: a smaller touchscreen and a full candybar keyboard. Or hell, just a re-designed Android interface that we can drop into non-touch devices.
Posted: August 28th, 2009 | Author: TimConneally | Filed under: hardware | Tags: Android, att, centro, deutsche, device, fancy pants, fun with pie charts, gadget, gizmo, handy, htc, Mobile, motorola, nextel, palm, pie, Prince Rogers Nelson, quiver, smartphone, sprint, stable, t-mobile, t-punkt, telekom, treo, verizon, WebOS, windows, wireless, zany germans | 3 Comments »
MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen told The Street yesterday that AT&T ditched its plans to carry a Motorola Android phone, referring to the HTC Heron which Motorola originally designed to be a Windows Mobile phone, and then reportedly retracted at the last minute to load up with Android instead.
A lot of pundits have put a lot of weight behind Motorola’s first two Android handsets, saying that this is the company’s “last chance” to recover its phone-producing arm, or some sort of swan song because of the spin-off that was supposed to take place in the third quarter of 2009.
Last October, Co-CEO Sanjay Jha said “While our strategic intent to separate the company remains intact, we are no longer targeting the third quarter of 2009, primarily due to the macro-economic environment, stresses in the financial markets and the changes underway in Mobile Devices.”
Not having support from AT&T is a big detriment, some say, as it’s the only carrier consistently stealing subscribers away from other carriers.
But wait, AT&T didn’t just cock-block Motorola. It’s actually given the big thumbs down to TWO companies offering an Android device. Apparently it pitched HTC’s Lancaster into the dumpster this summer as well, only that time, we don’t know exactly why. Rumors were that it could have been too underpowered or perhaps even too problematic for a successful launch.
Because AT&T is the exclusive iPhone carrier, people often forget that it offers any other smartphones. Maybe they don’t consider any other products noteworthy, I don’t know. But the point is, AT&T’s selection of smartphones is led by Windows Mobile. Check this out:
AT&T's smartphone roster by OS
If you look at these stats as a direct reflection of the U.S. smartphone market as a whole, you’ll notice right away that the OS distribution is kind of out of whack. Yes, AT&T has 70 million subscribers, and that’s an important factor in the availability of an OS…but how much does it really determine market position?
I mean, does Windows Mobile have the lion’s share of the domestic smartphone market because it is the most common OS in AT&T’s smartphones? Of course not: Blackberry does, then iPhone, THEN Windows Mobile.
Let’s assume that on September 10th, T-Mobile and Verizon get Motorola Android phones, and lets see how their charts look.
Here are our friends over at T-Mobile. We know those zany Germans love Android (they got the Samsung Galaxy before anyone else, after all.) However, we see that Android happens to be T-Mobile’s ONLY smartphone OS that isn’t Windows Mobile or Blackberry. It’s probably because they’re too busy gunking up their phone lineup with those silly Sidekicks.
T-Mobile's smartphone OS distribution
And here’s Verizon. As you can see, they’re the most balanced/least diverse smartphone carrier in our list thus far.
Verizon's Smartphones if they get Motorola Sholes
AT&T already offers the most diverse selection of Smartphones, at least by operating system…so maybe it’s not trying to thin the proverbial broth by adding any old mediocre Android device to the pool.
Now, you’re probably going to say “Hold up a second, fancy pants! Where’s the Palm Centro in all this?”
I know right? Check Sprint, they’re the only carrier still offering Palm’s (awesome) gear as of this very moment. While we’re looking at them, you’ll notice that Sprint’s got quite a diverse OS lineup…but that diversity is mostly due to Palm’s multi-platform delivery.
No Android here...yet.
So yes…my point. The carriers we expect to have Android on them also happen to be the ones with the least diverse smartphone selection.
I know there’s only a correlative link between number of OSes and likelihood of new OS adoption (and not a causal one,) so don’t bite my face off for pointing it out.