I’ve been using an Android G1 phone for more than a month now on a daily basis, but I still haven’t given up my iPhone. The more I use them both, the more that I realize my iPhone is a Mac and my Android is a PC.
That is not necessarily a bad thing—except for when my Android crashes (which is a lot). Okay, it does not actually crash so much as it freezes up, forcing me to wait until it figures things out. Which it usually does. Except that one time when I plugged it into the wrong mini-USB charger and it gave me the screen of death: a white danger triangle with a cell phone flat on its back next to it. (Sorry for the fuzzy picture, I took it with my iPhone).
Whose fault was that crash? I’m sure it was mine. But believe me, I’m equally careless with my iPhone. It’s just a lot more stable. That’s kind of what you’d expect since Apple goes to such lengths to control every aspect of the device, including the kinds of apps that can run on it. Android apps also have to go through a vetting process, but it does not seem to be as strict as Apple’s. → Read More
We all knew the white G1 was lurking somewhere out there — but now it’s actually whitening T-Mo stores near you. Do you really need a link to prove it? I didn’t think so. Personally, I prefer the black one, but I also prefer the black iPhone and Black Dice. Anyway, if the color was the only reason you weren’t getting a G1, your time has come at last. No longer will you struggle to find your ebon-hued mobile in a darkened room! → Read More
Revising their previous target of 600,000 HTC G1s shipped by the end of 2008, HTC CEO Peter Chou has disclosed that the company now expects to ship at least 1 million of the world’s first Android handset by year’s end. While it’s not quite as mind-boggling as the 1 million iPhone 3Gs Apple sold in just 3 days after launch, pushing one million handsets in 2 1/2 months is no small feat. Read the rest of this story over at MobileCrunch » → Read More
Back in April, Opera released a technical preview of Opera Mini for the Android SDK. The version of the SDK it was developed for was far from the final version, so by the time the G1 was launched in October, the Opera Mini package wouldn’t even make an attempt at installing itself to the device. Love it or hate it, the G1′s built-in browser has been your only web-perusing option since launch – until today, that is. While there hadn’t been much indication that Opera had continued pushing forward with Opera Mini on Android since that preview release, they’ve gone and pushed an Android version of the just-released Opera Mini 4.2 to the market. Read more at MobileCrunch >> → Read More
Caution: Pink Floyd blasting as soon as you hit “play” I’m pumped about this because I just got a G1. This video shows a pretty basic paint program tracking two inputs at once — it’s pretty hacked together but it clearly works okay. We knew it was possible technically, now we see it’s possible practically, and hopefully soon we’ll see it supported officially. More info at the developer RyeBrye’s blog. → Read More
Caution: Pink Floyd blasting as soon as you hit “play” I’m pumped about this because I just got a G1. This video shows a pretty basic paint program tracking two inputs at once — it’s pretty hacked together but it clearly works okay. We knew it was possible technically, now we see it’s possible practically, and hopefully soon we’ll see it supported officially. More info at the developer RyeBrye’s blog. → Read More
After yesterdays announcement that Adobe was working on Flash for both Windows Mobile and Android, we mentioned that a brief demonstration of Flash running on the G1 was shown. Don’t believe it? The proof is in the pudding. The delicious streaming video pudding. While there are a few apparent framerate stutters, this is by all indications a work in progress for Adobe. The element was embedded on a bare page, without any other elements whatsoever – not exactly how they’re generally served. This is presumably to ensure that this not-yet-optimized version of Flash had as many resources as possible for the demo, but hopefully the final version will be able to handle more than standalone SWF files. [I4UNews via AndroidForums] → Read More
Whenever the G1 vs iPhone debate gets underway, iPhone purists are quick to flag the G1′s lack of multi-touch input support. Turns out, it might just be able to handle it after all – on the hardware end, at least. Whilst tearing his G1′s workings apart line-by-line, a crafty coder going by RyeBrye came across an interesting artifact. It seems the driver for the Synaptics touchscreen has some code commented out; after recompiling the kernel with said code back in, he was able to track two finger presses at once. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >> → Read More
Whenever the G1 vs iPhone debate gets underway, iPhone purists are quick to flag the G1′s lack of multi-touch input support. Turns out, it might just be able to handle it after all -on the hardware end, at least. Whilst tearing his G1′s workings apart line-by-line, a crafty coder going by RyeBrye came across an interesting artifact. It seems the driver for the Synaptics touchscreen has some code commented out; after recompiling the kernel with said code back in, he was able to track two finger presses at once. So if the hardware supports it, why no multi-touch on the G1? Patents, presumably. While this in no way actually enables to you to do any kind of multi-touch funnin’ immediately (nothing made for the G1 is currently coded for use with multi-touch, afterall), it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Though we probably won’t see any official support for multi-touch on the G1 any time soon, someone with a bit of spare time to tinker will probably figure out a way to make use of it before too long. → Read More
The LG Prada II is coming, thank God. It’s scheduled to debut in the UK, the originator of WAG culture, on Tuesday, November 18. The touchscreen phone, which has a 5-megapixel camera (which was last impressive two years ago), also has a slide-out keyboard, making it more G1 than iPhone. There’s no price just yet (though it was rumored at around €600), which is fantastic considering it comes out in just a few days. Then again, I’m going to venture and guess that most of you wouldn’t been seen with a Prada phone if your life depended on it. Too self-consciously “fashionable,” right? → Read More
Oh, how I love these product tear down price studies, wherein some research company grabs a product, rips it apart piece by piece, and pins a pricetag on each individual component to announce a somewhat shaky cumulative price. With at least a couple of the components in any given device being proprietary, a bit of it is educated guessing. Whether they’re dead on or completely wrong, how would we know? It’s not as if any major company is going to come out and say “Pfft, what? Product X actually costs [amount here] to make, thank you very much.” Whatever – they tear it down, I just report it. Research firm iSuppli has stripped the T-Mobile G1 down to its naughty bits, and has emerged with a number: $144. That’s $35 bucks less than the subsidized 2-year contract price of $179, and $255 less than the full retail price of $399. While that doesn’t take into account R&D, labor, shipping, nor the money T-Mobile makes on a monthly basis from plans/contracts, I’d imagine that the numbers work out in their favor in the long run. → Read More
While a significant chunk of G1 owners still await the RC29 update that started rolling out a few days ago, Google has already queued up another one. While people generally welcome updates with open arms, this ones got a few folks upset. Last week, an eagle-eyed tinkerer realized that you could gain root access to the G1 by using telnetd, essentially “jailbreaking” it. Now, this isn’t jailbreaking in the “install just about whatever you want” sense most iPhone owners would think of — the G1 already does that. Instead, it gives you full admin abilities down to the very core of the handset’s filesystem. While this allows for modifications both beneficial and malicious, Google has decided that the risks outweigh the benefits. With RC30, root access via telnetd is blocked. Read more at MobileCrunch >> → Read More
It was only a few days ago that we tore into the 20 dollar IM+ application for being overpriced, buggy, and lacking anything that justified that 20 dollar price tag. At the tail-end of that review, we expressed our hopes that an IM app done right would come along soon. Enter Meebo for Android, brought to you by the same people behind the awesome browser-based IM application of the same name. It’s got a clean interface, is dead simple to use, and best of all: it’s FREE. Game over, IM+. → Read More
Word of T-Mobile’s Holiday line-up just came down the wire, and it doesn’t look like they’ve kept any Christmas surprises up their sleeve. Anything that hasn’t been announced officially has been leaked for a few weeks now, so this pretty much just serves as one big confirmation. Motorola ZN5: Pictured on right. Announced and released 2 days ago. It’s a quadband candy bar. While it doesn’t have 3g capabilities, it does have WiFi and a 5 megapixel camera with xenon flash. Not too shabby for $99 on a two year bloodpact. Cameo: Leaked a month ago. It’s a $100 7-inch digital picture frame with its own SIM card and number. Send pictures to it via picture message, and they show up on the frame. Cool idea, but the $10-dollars-a-month fee seems a bit steep. Available in “the coming weeks” → Read More
A cabal of tinkers have managed to get root access on the G1 using telnetd. Now, whether or not that constitutes “jailbreaking” (which is an awkward word to use considering Android is supposed to be an open source operating system from the get-go) or something a little less dramatic is another matter. Or, to quote a Gizmodo commenter: This reminds me of the Spongebob episode where they steal a balloon on free balloon day. I think that says it all. via Slashdot → Read More
What’s wrong with Wal-Mart? Low prices, friendly old people greeting you as you enter. It’s this close to Heaven. NOT TO SOME PEOPLE. Channel Web, for instance. They have come up with five reasons why Wal-Mart selling the G1 at a discount is evil, evil, evil. You can read the list for yourself—it’s hilarious!—but I wanted to point this one out: It’s Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart isn’t the first place that comes to mind when smart phone shoppers are seeking out a new device… Oh, that makes sense. This guy is upset because he paid full price for the G1, then Wal-Mart turns around and offers it for less. So be he missed out on the discount, let’s crucify the store. It’s pretty silly, I think. It’s a $30 discount that many people will appreciate. Why hate? via Wired’s Gadget Lab → Read More
Shipping delays have left Wal-Mart shelves bare of the first Android handset, the T-Mobile G1. It was originally reported that the mega-retailer would begin selling the G1 at a discounted price of $148.88 this week, but BetaNews has learned that this is not the case. “We’ve experienced a few shipping issues, but we’re working with T-Mobile on that,” said Wal-Mart’s Ashley Hardie. → Read More
This is the type of minutia that wears down men’s souls: The structures of the trackball module and the Hall IC look almost the same as used in the BlackBerry Bold of Research In Motion Ltd. Translated into English, or Common, this says that the trackball used in the G1 is the same as the one found in BlackBerrys. That’s according to one engineer, at least. And what have we gained with this knowledge, that a small round piece of plastic found in one device is the same as small piece of plastic found on another device? ::shrugs shoulders:: → Read More
