March 2009
2 posts
Countdown ... Will I or Won't I Keep the Android...
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...
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:
...
February 2009
47 posts
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...
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...
Countdown, 15 Days: Midway
Halfway through my 30-day test period, I’m less than sold on the device. As I noted yesterday, too many connection errors when using email and too many blank stares from the web browser. Otherwise, it works OK, and some of it is quite amazing, like the Shazam app (which the iPhone also has), which can recognize songs for future reference. I assume there are some great apps waiting for the...
if only connect
Endless “connection error” action all day long.
Trying to browse the web, and told pages aren’t there, thought they are.
Delete a bunch of email via the default email app, and you get back home and they’re still in Thunderbird.
All in all, pretty beta. Kinda alpha, maybe.
Countdown, 16 Days: Tether, Bluetooth, Future
So, it’s a Tuesday, and I’m free to wander about. My snazzy G1 has a fast connection, courtesy of T-Mobile.
But, if I head to a cafe, I can’t tether my laptop to it.
And, I can’t use it as a serious data-entry device, because it won’t connect with external Bluetooth keyboards.
Which leaves me with two questions (I’m still going to leave the house, presuming...
App: Twidroid
This seems to be the default, by which I mean most popular, Twitter client for Android, but I have trouble with it. I have connection errors regularly, typed messages don’t go through regularly, and often when it loads it takes minutes before the most recent tweets appear.
AppForge
I’m glad Android, and the iPhone OS, and now it seems Windows Mobile and Nokia, have their own appstores. But where is the SourceForge of Android apps, the open-source hub for uncommerical releases? I suppose that’s just the “free” section of Android’s market, but there’s a difference between “free” and “open source.”
Countdown, 17 Days: Phone-Free
It’s pretty much every day that I check email, watch TV, read a book, flip through the newspaper, eat breakfast.
It’s not every day I make a phone call, or send an SMS. It’s not every day that I use my phone, and yesterday, the rainiest day in recent memory here in San Francisco, was such a day. I dismounted the G1 from my laptop when I ran a few errands, but had no need to use...
Countdown, 18 Days: That Sinking Feeling
Yow, yesterday was the worst day, by far, on the phone. It was also the first day I could describe as anything less than pretty darn good, so for now I’ll write it off as an anomaly.
Still, I don’t know if the inclement weather that has suddenly struck San Francisco, where I live, could be to blame, or if all of a sudden 10,000 more people decided to use the T-Mobile network the same...
Countdown, 19 Days: V-Day
As I enter the 19th day of usage, I ponder my affection for the G1. It’s Valentine’s Day, right? So, do I love it, am I ready to commit? Or is this just a fling, 30 days of no-strings fun, and then back it goes?
Countdown, 20 Days: Root Down
OK, at this point only a few things could probably keep me from keeping the G1, and that’s if within the remaining time frame a better Android phone appears (or appears on the horizon) and if I can’t work out tethering (which I’m not going to attempt if it voids the warranty). Which is to say, I am very happy with the Android OS for the phone.
And it’s an auspicious day...
Countdown, 21 Days: An App a Day
Yesterday provided some of the most thorough use the G1 has gotten, and without any midday charge, I was still able to surf through Google Reader entries during a late cab ride home.
The absence of a proper App for Google Reader doesn’t annoy me so much as intrigue me. You use Reader, Google’s powerful and simple RSS aggregator, through its G1 browser, just as you would on a proper,...
tumblr works
Just got my first email reply to this microblog — someone I don’t know read it, and gave me some advice on one of my questions.
Countdown, 22 Days: Achieving Normal
A day packed with multiple-account email, web searches, and phone calls, all running smoothly. My issues with the G1 at this moment are whittled down to minor inconveniences (with the exception of the absence of tethering and doc editing, the former of which I’m going to attempt, and the latter is ont he way). Battery life still is substandard, but perhaps it’s balanced by the virtures...
Countdown, 23 Days: kila-user 1.1 PLAT-RC33 126986
That inhuman spew above is info buried deep in the G1’s Settings, in the last entry in the last section of that series of nested submenus.
What the “33” in “kila-user 1.1 PLAT-RC33 126986” means is that when little icons appeared on my phone’s screen late yesterday morning, a software upgrade was being installed. There’s a lot of info on the web...
Countdown, 24 Days: First Sunday
Sunday, like Saturday, proved a good day for the phone. The weekend, my first G1 weekend, meant less intensive usage in more varied circumstances, which led to lowered battery-related anxiety and more of a sense of the device’s intrinsic utility.
Checking email while out and about, getting text alerts from friends en route, locating individuals in the contact list, checking voicemail,...
Countdown, 25 Days: Standard Use
Yesterday was the best day I’ve had yet with the phone. I was up, out, and about, using it in lots of settings — around the house, on errands. The ring woke me up for an important call, and the battery never flagged. All the basic tools were truly of use, from searching on the go, to referencing the calendar, to checking multiple email accounts (still some connection issues, but so be...
spare battery
T-Mobile just called to see how my phone is doing, and to offer me a spare battery. Maybe they’re reading this microblog.
Countdown, 26 Days: Hassle and Holdout
As I fiddle with the G1, I become more enamored of it. And I come to realize that most of what I’m focused on that could be better is just that, tweaks and incremental improvements. For example, I keep reaching for my stylus, because I was raised on a Palm, but the capactive screen has its own benefits. And some of the minors hassles have alternatives; for example, clicking down on the...
for the record: android 3g, t-mobile, 30 days test...
For anyone joining this program midway through, here’s what’s up: I bought a T-Mobile G1, and I’m testing it for 30 days, to see if I want to keep it. This “tumblr.” blog is me testing it in public. The funny thing about me having selected tumblr. as the service to host the mini-blog is that the tumblr. website doesn’t seem to function on the G1’s browser:...
to 3G or not to 3G
Phone keeps showing the singal switching from E to 3G and back, often when I’m just sitting somewhere for an extended period. Not sure why.
email settings
Note to self: those recommended revised email options are port 143 for imap, 587 for smtp, turning off SSL, and swapping out “secure.” server for “imap.” and “smtp.” I’ve yet to try them.
ebook ticket
Google Android has appeared to have read my mind. Just yesterday I was fiddling with insufficient ebook apps, and today comes announcement that Google Book Search is now mobile-friendly. Suddenly I’m looking forward to my bus ride.
Countdown, 27 Days: Sync or Swim
Biggest issues for the day were sync-related.
1. My email continues to be a hassle. My email service doesn’t “officially support” Android yet, and the issues I’m having with the email now I never had with my ancient Symbian phone, or any web browser. Via G1, I get occasional emails that come through will “null” as the content. Last night, this even led to...
usbattery
One thing about the relatively low battery life: the fact that the G1 can be charged via USB (something none of my previous phones was capable of) makes (re)charging it a lot more accessible.
And you have to consciously choose to mount the USB as a drive, which means you can attach to any computer without fear of someone else accessing your data.
reading, if not writing
All of which said, the phone was a great experience in its first full day of work. Easy access to multiple email accounts, great keyboard (if somewhat limited in its use, due to absence of .doc support for the moment), superb web-browsing, useful apps (especially the Twidroid one).
Though, one thing about the web-browsing: there is a pair of helpful + and - symbols at the bottom of the browser,...
email connection
Three times yesterday, email wouldn’t connect. I’d get a “connection error,” and as a result be unable to check new mail, or read old mail. At its worst, this error resulted in the re-appearance of numerous emails I had deleted earlier in the day.
Bluetooth
Rendering somewhat moot the point that there’s no native Doc or Excel support, the Bluetooth on the phone is limited in that it cannot associate with external keyboards. That, for me, could be a deal-killer.
@ttitude
How is this not a mistake? Why are there two @ keys on the keyboard?
attachments
And speaking of email, since there’s no support for .doc files (or Excel, for that matter), or an integrated means (again, as far as I can tell) to move them to Google Docs, there’s no way to open such attachments.
copy that
Yes, among the things that the G1 has on the iPhone is native cut’n’paste. However, far as I can tell, there’s no way to copy from an email.
Countdown, 28 Days: Battery ... Battery
The old Metallica song kept running through my head as the primary focus of my attention was the phone’s battery, which is anthing by robust. I installed a power manager, which may help some. By the end of the day, though, the battery wasn’t as much of a concern to me as I thought it might have been. If you think of the machine as what it is, a very small computer that can run for...
that topbar dropdown thing
Still learning the lingo, but the first thing about the G1 that I truly love is that notification bar that drops down from the top of the screen like a window shade on greased ball bearings.
meta
There is no tumblr app in Android’s app marketplace.
voice recorder
The longest document I have read on the phone is the consent form for the Voice Recorder app. I declined the installation. But it wasn’t a total waste of time. I now know that downloading an app doesn’t mean installing it, which gives you a little breathing room when making such a decision.
Countdown, 29 Days: Phone Is Now a Phone
February 4, 2008: I wake to learn that my AT&T number has now transfered to my G1. My phone is now a phone. Of course, I rarely if ever use my phone as a phone — it’s more for IMs, SMS, web-stuff, and typing, but having a phone is a nice little addition to its functionality.
on-screen keyboard, mia
As has been widely discussed, there’s no on-screen keyboard. Until you actually experience its absence, this may seem like a footnote. What it is is a hassle. There’s supposedly one coming. I’d like to see video of the discussion where the person who said an onscreen keyboard isn’t necessary won; the sane person must have pretty poor rhetorical skills.
no evernote
There’s no Evernote app for Android. I imagine there will be, so this is no deal-killer, but it is unfortunate.
email sync issues
My email is hosted by Mailtrust, which has an excellent web-based mail service, which includes a preview pane, which for me is a must. When I reply to an email from my G1, Mailtrust isn’t recognizing the original email as having been replied to. This is a hassle.
apps don't close
This seems like classic early Google. Apps don’t necessarily close when you stop using them, and there’s no apparent manual means to do so yourself. Reminds of the “no delete button” vigilance of early Gmail.
Countdown, 30 Days: Dead Phone Means New Phone
February 3, 2008: My Nokia e62, after two-plus years of constant use, has decided to retire from functionality. I go to T-Mobile and buy the G1. I have 30 days to try it out.