Expectations and initial impressions of HTC Desire
I just got my first Android phone yesterday – HTC Desire. I have been using an iPhone 3G for a little more than a year and I like it a lot. But, coming from WinMo 6.1 platform, it was very different, and quite frankly, difficult to use. I always wanted to buy an Android device since the G1 came out. Obviously, I couldn’t do that till today.
Now that I have been a smartphone user from long back, I have some expectations set for my new phone. So, I was playing around with the phone and the OS from yesterday. As it is too early to declare whether it was worth upgrading to over an iPhone or not, I have identified features that might play a significant role in the process.
Things I love about HTC Desire over iPhone:
- First and foremost, it doesn’t need to be jailbroken or unlocked in order to use it. I kinda hate apple for career locking the iPhone. Yes, there I said it. I have seen many enthusiastic users (yes, I am one of them) buying an iPhone only to find out that it contains the latest “baseband” and it cannot be jailbroken/unlocked. I mean, what’s the use spending a lot of money just to find out you got a music player instead of a smartphone. So much for making money, huh Apple?
- Multitasking: Yes, I am aware that it is coming with iPhone OS 4. But, sadly multitasking will not be supported on iPhone 3G. Beside, I am not here to compare iPhone OS and Android, I am comparing two phones that I own and it is a fair comparison. I always wanted to run google talk in the background. I was using IM+ with Push in iPhone but, somehow push is not the same as running the app in background. Let’s see how does it work out.
- Better Camera and Video Recording: You got to accept the fact that iPhone 3G camera sucks. I am delighted to get a far better one with video recording capabilities. Autofocus with face detection, Advanced Settings, Zooming, Geotagging and LED Flash are cherry on top. (I know, too many cherries
) - Useful widgets on home screen: Being a former WinMo user, this is one of those things that went missing when I switched to iPhone. You can’t control what you have on your home screen (for iPhone, lock screen because there is no such thing as home screen). On top of that, it seems that HTC has improved home screens with Sense UI and I am glad that I will not have to open an application to check news/tweets/weather thanks to Sense widgets.
- Notification Tray: Great original android concept. It’s a good thing that I won’t lose any notification like I do in iPhone and goodbye to those annoying Push messages.
- Smart Dialing: Another thing that went missing when I “upgraded” to iPhone from WinMo. I am just too lazy to type whole number or name or when I don’t remember the name.
- Bluetooth: Again, one more feature that went missing when I switched to iPhone. I never used bluetooth on iPhone because It couldn’t perform what I wanted (File/vCard transfers) and I wasn’t interested in what it could perform (Headset).
- Notification LED: It was very convenient to monitor battery charging and notifications on my WinMo because of this. Another thing lost with iPhone. Anyway, not a “must need” feature but nice to have it.
Things I may love about HTC Desire compared to iPhone:
- People (Contacts): iPhone contacts management and sync were nice and all but, what beats phone contacts integration with Google Contacts and Facbook? The linking and splitting of contacts looks nice and how can I forget contact groups? Despite all the excitement, my final verdict is reserved.
- Google Calendar Sync: Automatic syncing with google calendar sounds useful. Never used it before but, I feel I will find it useful.
- Integration to social networks: Ability to upload photos to Picasa/Flicker/Facebook as well as videos to Youtube directly from phone is sweet.
- Adobe Flash: Well, it’s not 2015 yet and most of the websites still use flash to serve content like video and audio. I don’t particularly hate any of them. Flash has contributed so much to the web and I’m sure HTML5 will do the same (or more). Though probably HTML5 will replace flash eventually for audio/video, I simply don’t want to wait for it.
- FM Radio: I never owned a phone with FM radio but, I guess once in a while it’s entertaining to listen to it rather than my library which doesn’t change frequently. But, I am still not happy with the fact that I have to use stereo headset in order to do it. (Update: I get static sound when the handsfree cable is near to my phone) (Update 2: Surprise surprise. I thought it will only work with HTC handsfree kit but it worked with my Head-Direct RE2.)
- OTA Software Updates: Despite the fact that I have never done it, it sounds exciting. Will do that for Froyo update. Who wants to connect the phone to a computer to get latest software update? Then again, not so important for longer run because I will be playing around with different ROMs.
- Lock text message to prevent deletion: Small feature. But, I could use something like that to keep important text messages.
- Pattern-based Screen Lock: iPhone has pin-based lock. But, somehow I feel this is cooler
- Voice recognition: Google voice-to-text is good. I’d say it is 70% accurate for me. Can be helpful on bumpy roads sometimes.
Things I loved on iPhone and are missing here/are not as good:
- Bright Screen: I knew that AMOLED screens are not the best in terms of visibility in sunlight. But, after practically using it outside, I kinda miss the bright iPhone screen. Worse thing is, when set the brightness to “auto”, it doesn’t automatically adjust it to full when in sunlight. I have to do it manually.
- Hardware Ringer/Vibrate switch: I absolutely love it. You can turn your phone silent without even looking at it. Perfect.
- iTunes: I kinda like managing my audio library in iTunes, especially the ratings and play count. Wouldn’t want to lose that now, do we? (Update: Just tried Doubletwist – iTunes for Android which apparently lets me import iTunes playlists. Great, I’m happier now. )
- Keyboard Accuracy: I don’t know if it’s not as accurate as iPhone but, I am having hard time typing on it. I hope it improves with practice.
- Screenshots: iPhone has built-in functionality of taking screenshots without using an app (Wow, that’s the first). I kinda miss it in Android.
- Turning the screen on: This sounds weird but, I have habit of turning the screen of my iPhone by pressing home button rather than power button. (Actually, double press it for music controls ) Anyway, as it seems, I can only bring unlock screen on desire by pressing power button and it’s annoying. I have found a way to overcome it but, it requires rooting. So, no biggie.
- Scratch-resistant screen: I assumed that it’s a standard feature for a high-end touchphone. As it turns out, it isn’t. And I have learnt it the hard way.
So, these are my initial observations and final verdict is still pending. I will post more about “things I may love” and stuff like battery life later.
Update: Added scratch-resistant screen to the missing list.
Back from Hibernation with a Bang!!!
As you can probably notice, I am not what you can call a “Regular Blogger”. Mostly, I am too lazy to write a whole post that’s probably not going to be read by anybody.
Anyway, today’s different story. It doesn’t matter if anybody is going to read it. I just want to remember this day. So, the background story goes like this:
I decided to leave my current job at Infosys about three months ago. I knew what I have to do but, I wasn’t sure whether now was the right time. In short, one could say I resigned without having another job or even a concrete plan for future. Until today, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave the secure job and comfortable life I am living here for greater stress, lesser money and no comfort. As I said, this was the case until today. Today is the day I realized why am I doing this. I am as sure of doing this as one can be.
I still have one and a half month before I set my sails for more adventurous journey. But, as they say, half the battle is won if you are really determined to win it. So, regardless of whether I meet my expectations, I want to remember this day when I won half the battle
The Continuous BIOS Beep Crisis
I have faced a weird BIOS issue today. Apparently, I was cleaning up the dust on my CPU heatsink. When I booted my machine after I was finished, first it started with single beep immediately followed by a never-ending beep. My machine started without any glitch but the beep sound won’t stop. BTW, I am running a Intel C2D E8400 on Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R.
So, I immediately checked my CPU and system temperatures. They were normal. Even tried finding similar issue (and a solution) on the web with no luck. As my system was working perfectly, I decided to go ahead and remove the detachable BIOS speaker. But, the problem here was not solved; I’ve just found a way around it. I couldn’t resist myself and dug deeper to find an explanation of this unusual (and undocumented) behavior. After spending some time, I noticed that my CPU fan was running but, in BIOS Monitor, the CPU Fan speed was zero.
Looks like it is a built-in warning to notify that CPU Fan is not running. Disabling the CPU Fan Monitoring in BIOS did the trick. That left me wondering how did I fry my CPU Fan Censor when cleaning it? Anyway, glad that all is well again.
It’s time for Touch-Friendly Web!!!
The World Wide Web has been evolving since its birth. First, it was just a collection of static web pages. Then came Web 2.0 and a new era of blogs, wikis and social networks. The web services evolved to be more user-centric. During this evolution of web, I have seen wide range of web pages; from totally ugly ones to substantially attractive ones. Web has become much more sophisticated than it was in late ’90s.
The thing about evolution is, it never stops. Not so long back, we used to access internet at sluggish speeds using dial-up modem. Look at us now, we have so many means to access much faster version of the web. Accessibility in fixed machines is way faster using Cable/DSL. One also can access internet using laptops, tablets or cell phones, when mobile, using Wi-Fi and EDGE/3G/HSDPA. Specifically looking at recent hardware developments, web access using mobiles (specifically, touch screen mobiles) has increased over last 2 years. Manufacturers also started developing touch-screen monitors and nettops after introduction of basic touchscreen support in Windows 7. Rumor has it, Apple is also in process of manufacturing a touchscreen tablet and hopefully bringing touchscreen support to OS X with it.
So, where does it lead us? Web access from touchscreen cell phones is constantly increasing, desktop computers are becoming touch-sensitive and desktop operating systems are going touch-friendly – these things lead to only one conclusion; the web usage using touchscreen devices will keep increasing. These newly developed devices may not penetrate the mainstream market soon but it’s going to happen sooner or later so, why not be prepared for it?
How does this affect web developers? Keeping user experience in mind, nobody wants to lose visits from touchscreen device users, do they? Developers started making “iPhone friendly” web pages long back; it’s just that iPhone is not going to be the only touchscreen device forever using which, people access web.
An Indian Book Search Engine: Iglooo.in
While US has got great online book stores like Amazon Books, buying a book online and getting a good deal is still a headache in India. I recently came across a decent online Indian Book search engine called Iglooo.in. After using it, I really felt that I got good deals in books than I used to get by manually searching every store. It doesn’t support many book stores for now but, it has got potential. It’s something I want to see grow into something big. Kudos to the Iglooo team.
Upgraded my iPhone 3G to OS 3.1
After yesterday’s release of the new PwnageTool 3.13, I decided that I should upgrade my iPhone to the new OS 3.1. The problem was, this method of jailbreak doesn’t yet support Windows. For patching of OS 3.1 firmware, the Leopard Hackintosh (Actually, a Hackintosh VM) came in handy. Moved the patched firmware to windows and flashed it using iTunes in traditional way.
The upgrade took about 5 minutes as usual and voila!! I now have OS 3.1 with all my settings and apps restored by iTunes. I had to install the sim unlock (ultrasn0w) and other jailbreak apps again. But, that’s fine I guess.
Regarding the major features, home screen customization from iTunes is neat. Makes it easier to organize the app icons. App Genius suggestions are okay. Can’t really test Safari’s newest fraud protection and anti-phishing filter but, it’s supposed to be good. I have to monitor it for couple of days for any improvements in battery life.
Update: Battery life hasn’t gone worse, if not improved. I found Anti-phishing filter in safari quite irritating as pages seem to load slower when it is on. App Genius is not what I expected it to be. It does’t always give satisfactory results.
Google Wave: First impressions
Today, I saw a news story on Engadget informing that Google Wave beta started and invites were sent to 100,000 users. I was disappointed to know that I was not one of them. As it turns out, I am. I just got my Google Wave invitation.
First impressions: neat and user friendly. I’ll ‘collaborate’ with some of my friends and post my opinions.
Update [October 3, 2009]: After sending out invites to my friends and colleagues, it seems they still haven’t received it. According to the note on the invite page – “Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.”. Well, we understand it Google but, how many days will it take to “lick a lot of stamps”, huh??
Update [October 9, 2009]: Google finally sent out invites that I sent a few days back. I still have some invites left. Let me know if you want one.
My Expectations From The Smartphone Market
I remember when there were only handful of smartphone manufacturers out there namely HTC, Blackberry, Palm etc. I wouldn’t have considered Nokia, SE, Motorola, Samsung etc. as worthy contenders back then. No offense but, they mostly targeted the different (and way bigger) market with cost-effective do-it-all phones. They never took the business phone market that seriously. On the other hand, manufacturers like Blackberry, Palm and HTC targeted their devices to relatively very small Business phones market.
A smartphone user expects something extra, something premium from his phone. For example, all the blackberry users are most probably in love with push email (A unique feat in those days), or the Windows Mobile users want familiarity and integration to their desktop operating system. Still, smartphone OSes were not up to user’s expectations. The principle was, the more functionality you want, the more problems you get. And surprisingly enough, the smartphones had more problems than the “ordinary” phones like freezing or an occasional restart. I liked my first smartphone – HTC TyTN, a Windows Mobile device, because of the things it could do. I was simply amazed by the integration between Contacts, Phone, Email, Calendar etc. which I had never seen before. The applications, customizations you could do, widgets for weather, stocks etc. was way too cool. I never expected more from it because I couldn’t imagine the possibilities. But, I’m glad someone did.
It was Apple who set a benchmark of what a smartphone should be with its iPhone. The iPhone was not perfect but, it was much better than other competitors. People weren’t going to buy the same old crap when a much better and much more stable mobile OS existed. As the iPhone became more and more popular, other smartphone manufacturers began to lose their market. That’s when the wheels were set into motion. Shortly after that, Google jumped in and announced Open Handset Alliance and Android, a linux-based, multi-device, open source mobile operating system. Now, how could the other big players stay back and watch the show. Soon, Microsoft announced Windows Mobile 6.5, which was supposed to be the first finger-touch-friendly installment from Microsoft and Windows Mobile 7, which is supposed to be a complete redesign of the OS. Palm also announced its Linux based WebOS.
iPhone OS still holds the crown, while Palm WebOS has come and brought some impressive stuff with it. Android is also improving rapidly. Seriously hoping that Microsoft brings something solid with WinMo 7. As for now, it is impossible to tell who will dominate the market.
The last couple of years have brought major growth in smartphone market. Smartphones and PDAs are more popular than ever. New and powerful devices are introduced and older devices are becoming obsolete quickly, mostly due to powerful mobile operating systems that require more resources to run. The future of smartphones is promising. It won’t be long before they will be important part of people’s lives.
A couple of years earlier, no one could have imagined that slow and powered down notebooks a.k.a. netbooks would ever sell. Look at them now. Netbooks have fairly large market now. With longer battery life, instant-on operating systems and web-based applications, they are perfect for average internet users. In future, smartphone market also has similar potential. The idea of a tiny device which intelligently combines all possible means of communication in one can really make a person’s life easier. Today, as we can see, mobile applications sales is boosted significantly and there is still much more room for improvement. So, we can expect a larger mobile apps market in future.
Android Development For Beginners
Just started playing with Android SDK 1.5r3 a couple of days ago. I went through some architecture videos, Hello World and Notepad tutorials. In my opinion, the API is still not mature enough but, it holds much potential. I don’t own an Android handset and the emulator doesn’t provide all the applications but, I came to know from some blog posts that built-in Apps are pretty basic and they drastically need improvement.
I was planning to develop a series of basic applications (similar to what AppsAmuck is for iPhone) which could help other newbie Android developers like me to learn things faster. Then, I came across blog of bakhtiyor, who has already made a similar effort. I will go through these applications this weekend and probably add couple of new apps to the list.
Update: I already started a couple of applications but, couldn’t get time to complete them. I wish to resume the development as soon as I can.
Google introduces a “Simple” language for Android
I came across a blog post announcing Release of Simple, which is a language based on BASIC. Simple google code page (pun intended) has binary distributions available for download for Windows, Linux and Mac. Author has updated it with a couple of sample applications and a bunch of Reference pages in its Wiki. It is well-suited for “non-professional” programmers who want to develop applications on Android. If you ask me, it’s a remote possibility. But, it is a good gesture from Google to encourage adaptation of Android.