G1 for 30 Days

Countdown … Will I or Won’t I Keep the Android G1 Phone …

I’ve decided to stick with the G1. It has its flaws, yes. However, the primary flaw from my perspective is that it isn’t the Android phone that’ll come out in three months, or six months, or a year, and honeslty that’s a flaw ingrained in every piece of technology, phone or otherwise.

If there are two things I wish the phone could do now, they are, and I’ve been clear about this from the start: (1) function with an external keyboard (Bluetooth or USB), and (2) do laptop tethering. I can’t imagine the first won’t come, and now that I’m not worried about voiding a warranty, I’ll give the latter a try, since hacks are available.

Otherwise, with the exception of some connectivity issues, I really couldn’t be more happy with the thing. In the last few days, a few things have happened that made me feel comfortable sticking with the G1, among them the serendipitous arrival of an Android-friendly mobile interface for the software Evernote (a proper app is apparently in the works, too).

OK, final take on the G1:

Browser: For browsing, the installed browser rocks, though I wish those little +/- signs didn’t always pop up, and I will try Firefox Mobile when it’s available.

K-9: I don’t use Gmail much, and the default non-Gmail app doesn’t hold a candle to K-9, which is now my mail email app.

After email and browsing, everything else is gravy, but there’s a lot of gravy. For example, the G1 has uninversal cut’n’paste, which is super-useful, and its notification bar is so fluid, it’s like software poetry.

I use these apps, all free, regularly:

Calendar

OI Notepad

Voice Recorder

FB Reader (ebook reader, pretty beta but functional and elegant)

Movie Finder

Twidroid (though I’m gonna try alternatives)

wpToGo (publishes to WordPress, which is what my Disquiet.com site runs on — the other app I tried, PostBot, could connect to the WP backend, but continuously err’d out when it came time to publish. By contrast, wpToGo literally worked on the second try — first time around, I needed to refresh the categories to get them to show up).

There are a ton of apps out there, and a dozen more I use, but none so often as those listed above.

I’m very much looking forward to the phone becoming a more regular part of my daily habits. I will not be posting any more to this micro-blog. The whole point was to track my usage of the phone, and I’ve accomplished that task.

Countdown, 4 Days: Tether, Bluetooth, OS

I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep the thing. Yesterday I spent most of the day out of the house, and the thing was super-helpful, and that’s without concerns about external keyboard support or tethering. On the BT side, I can’t imagine the patches won’t come, and as for tethering, there’s now code on Google itself with instructions:

http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/

But I’m going to wait until I’ve decided to keep it before I risk voiding a warranty.

My understanding is that as the Android OS improves, it’ll keep getting ported to the phone, in contrast with other phones (notably Windows Mobile), where the OS eventually becomes incompatible with past phones. That’s been my experience with updates so far, but who knows?

Dog Days

The app K-9 appears to kick the butt of the default email (non-Gmail) app.

Countdown, 9 Days: Stasis

Missed yesterday, as I was on the couch for most of it, with a pretty high temperature. Tumblr still doesn’t work in the browser, and I had repeated missed connections. Need to give serious thought as to whether I hang with the G1, or switch to something monthly that’ll tide me over until another Android device or something else pops up.

Countdown, 11 Days: The Status of No Status

Humdrum day with the device, no ups, no downs — presume what ails it can only improve, and what’s good will remain so. Still find myself reaching for a stylus every so often …

Countdown, 12 Days: Return of the Droid

And then, a day in which everything works, including TwidDroid (test here: twitter.com/disquiet), and email (the occasional missed connection, but not too many). I’m waiting to see which paid apps pop up as being good, though I’ll likely purchase something in the next day or so, to see how the funcionality works.

Countdown, 13 Days: Smells Like …

I was looking forward to the arrival of paid apps on Android. And now they are here.

Inevitable as they were, though, I wasn’t looking forward to Fart App ($0.99), FartDroid ($1.50), gFart ($1.99), or Fart Tools ($0.99).

Fortunately, I suppose, Noble Fart is still free, as is iFart, as well as an earlier iteration of FartDroid.

Anyhow, perhaps hidden in the mist is somthing useful, like a tether app, or a good ebook reader (one with multiple file formats and bookmarking capabilities), or a Doc/RTF/XLS editor, or a means to connect a proper keyboard via Bluetooth, or a replacement for the default email program.

Countdown, 14 Days: Tethered

Today I spent a day in a cafe, which fortunately had free wireless, though the absurdity of not being able to use my phone as a model wasn’t lost on me. I did read much of a novel on FBReader, though, and that was enjoyable. And paid apps apparently just came online, so we’ll see what’s buried in there…

bad phone, no dessert

Head to dinner, figure I’d catch up on email. Connection error. Fortunately, I had a novel on an ebook reader to keep me company. I don’t know if the mail issue is with Android, the G1, or T-Mobile. It sure isn’t with my service provider.

no reply at all

Another complaint about the default email program. I have a third-party email provider that I access via the non-Gmail email program on Android. The fact that there are two separate email programs in Android is weird, to say the least — if Microsoft had one mobile email program for Hotmail that was supercharged, and another one for all other mail, well, it’d be a big story. Here, with Google, I guess it’s just odd.

Anyhow, if I reply to an email from my phone, there are four problems:

1., the interace on the phone doesn’t register the email I replied to as having been replied to;

2., the fact that the email I replied to has been replied to isn’t registered back via IMAP, so when I get back home, or check via webmail, there’s no evidence;

3., the default non-Gmail email program doesn’t have a function to move an email to another folder, so I can’t get the email out of my way, which means I have to either delete it or remember I replied to it, which is fine on a day-to-day basis, but not on long trips;

4., at least in Thunderbird, when the sent email does appear in the Sent folder, it appears as “unread.”

Four hassles.