According to Adobe today, the following devices will have Flash Player 10.1 (and consequently, the Android 2.2 “Froyo” update if they don’t already:)

Dell Streak
Google Nexus One
HTC EVO 4G
HTC Desire
HTC Incredible
Motorola Droid/Milestone
Samsung Galaxy S

Future devices running Android 2.2 will also support it, of course. My Droid is sitting here with 2.1 just itching to be updated. Of course, I’m also expecting the Archos 7 tablet in the mail for review, and the Creative Vado HD 3rd gen camera so I’m just itching all over.

Wirefly is offering the Cliq XT Titanium for free with a 2-year contract/data plan. Cliq XT has no physical keyboard, LED flash 5 megapixel camera, FM radio tuner, and touch-sensitive trackpad. 3.1″ touchscreen, MotoBLUR (based on Android 1.5), 802.11 Wi-fi, and A2DP Bluetooth. It’s a decent phone that didn’t get a lot of hype. If you know somebody up for upgrade on T-Mo, or somebody looking for a free entry-level smartphone that you’d like to turn onto Android, this is a damn good start.

All the way at the other end of Motorola’s line is the upcoming Droid X. It’s going to be huge in size and power and I’m going to go up to New York next week to get in on the launch event. Bear in mind, they didn’t invite me this time even though I’ve gone to the launch of two other Motorola Android devices this year and Sanjay Jha is my bro. I emailed them today, though…so I should be covering it quite thoroughly when they get back to me. …And with my newfound love for instant YouTube videos, I’ll have tons of hands-on video of it.

The particularly funny thing about the Droid X ad above is that it’s INCORRECT. The Droid X absolutely does not have an HD screen. It can capture HD video, but that’s different.

Motorola just announced another new device, the MotoROI.

We’ve had the MotoRAZR, MotoROKR, MotoRIZR…but, MotoROI? what the fuck does that even mean?

I laughed when I first saw it because we commonly encounter ROI in venture capitalist blogs and such as “return on investment,” which would be kind of hilarious in Motorola’s case…it’s effectively investing everything in the Android platform, and this is what we get. Is that really what they’re going for here?

If his device ran Android 1.6, it would have been perfectly named MoTOROID!

*waiting for laughter*

…this might help…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroid_(geometry)

see?

Toroid=Donut!

RDRR!!

Seriously though, I’m looking for what they’re going for in Korean. There’s a popular Korean site called “Roiworld” which has fashion games for little girls and shit. I’m having trouble because 저는 한국말 잘못 해요 and pretty much the only things I know in Korean end in a “da” or a “yo.”

Watch, it’s probably something stupid like KRAZR.

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

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

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

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 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, 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

In the main screen of the Android Market for Droid and Droid Eris users, there are three sections:  Apps, Games, and Verizon.  It is a different layout from the one peculiar to T-Mobile Android devices, where the three sections are Apps, Games, and Downloads.  Right now it’s not much, but it provides a look into what carrier-specific Android portals may look like.  When you click the Verizon tab, it opens a section titled “V Cast,” which includes a small handful of apps chosen specifically for Verizon users.

Right now there are only 15 apps up there, including free things like the Bank of America app, Myspace Mobile, and Flyscreen, and for-pay games like The Sims, Pac Man, and Call of Duty mobile.  Currently, only two apps are unique to Verizon, the free “My Verizon” app for account information, and the free Visual Voicemail app which requires a $2.99 monthly fee to use.  The latter of these comes pre-installed on the Droid and reportedly can’t be uninstalled….actually hang on, let me check and see if people aren’t just total morons….

Okay, they may be right.  When I looked through “manage applications,”  the only apps I can uninstall are the ones I installed myself.  This is, of course just a cursory judgement, and I’m sure some further probing will uncover a way to fix that, and I’ll post it when I do.  If not, that’s kind of stupid.

There really isn’t much else to say about the Verizon section of the Android Market, but there is one huge question:    If this is a V Cast-related market, are the for-pay apps billed to my account?

NOPE.

They’re Google Checkout just like everything else in the market.

Complete and total bust.

But that’s hopefully only for the time being.  Once the section provides apps unique to the Verizon network, or apps that are billable to your Verizon account, then it will be useful. For now though, it’s like a bar at 3:30 in the afternoon:  ghost town with potential.

"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.

I’m reposting part of what I wrote on Betanews today. The Xperia X10 looks very strong. 4″ screen, 8.1 megapixel camera, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, but “Android” is not the talking point of the device. That’s okay.

Meanwhile, my G1 has prevented me from doing anything exciting and testing out apps. It crashes when I switch apps. I don’t get many incoming calls, but every one crashes the phone process. Any time I open the Android Market, it refuses to go back to the home screen. I’ve uninstalled almost all my apps, I’ve cleared every cache, deleted my extraneous SMS conversations. And it’s still performing like fuck. My patience is waning.

I requested to be put on the waiting list to test the Motorola Droid, but they didn’t get back to me yet.

Here’s what I have to say about the Xperia X10. I have more at www.betanews.com, but I’m just giving you the gist here.

–Sony Ericsson took the wraps off of its first Android-based handset, the 1 GHz Snapdragon-powered Xperia X10. With a huge 4″ touchscreen, an 8.1 megapixel camera and the elegant custom user interface named “Rachael,” Sony Ericsson moves the Android platform a step further by giving it almost no mention in announcements and commercials.

Sony Ericsson mentions the Android Market, and notes in the spec sheet that the operating system is Android Donut 1.6, but otherwise it does not ride the point, and strives to make the device stand out as a distinct product.

This is where Android is headed, and it’s a good thing.

As anyone with a zealous interest in technology is sure to tell you, most people don’t give a damn what version of which operating system their phone is running. They only care if it works and their signals are strong. So rather than try to start an “I’m an Android / I’m an iPhone” battle like Verizon did with its Motorola Droid “iDon’t” advertising campaign, Sony Ericsson avoids even mentioning Android and the X10 in the same breath.

Instead, it gives its custom Android build its own name (UX Platform “built on top of the Open OS”) and talks about the uniquely Sony Ericsson experience it can provide with it.

It’s owning the Android experience, and in doing so, it’s giving the user less to think about and more to drool over.