Dooba.net

*** UPDATE ***

Hands on with this phone plus some great pictures here.

This thing looks great, and notice at the end of the article… flash player comes standard!

*** ***

HTC announced another Android handset today – the “Hero”

See specs here

A couple of big things jump out at me:

1) Flash support in the web browser
2) 5mp camera with auto focus and video capture
3) The “Hero” OS overlay from HTC.
4) Finally HTC puts in a headphone jack that doesn’t need a dongle

There are plenty of videos on youtube, etc, that show the Hero UI update for Android. This looks pretty slick, nice widgets like real time streaming stock quotes. Plus the look and feel are a bit more polished than the standard Android.

The other standard Android specs are here – Qualcomm 528Mhz proc, HSDPA, wifi, but then they also say “multitouch” screen. That is interesting. There is a custom Cupcake build out there that supposedly enables multitouch, but I haven’t tried it. That would be a nice addition.

I didn’t see price info and there is no official announcement from T-Mo, but the pics on engadget show “T-Mobile” on the screen, so I assume it will be coming. Good news for Android fans, more choices!

So it’s official, the HTC “Magic” is coming to T-Mobile. Pre sales start July 8th.

I’m pretty excited about this. Mostly because the phone looks SOO much better than the current G1. No info on pricing yet – hopefully the upgrade price isn’t ridiculous. But I’ll definitely be upgrading.

Specs look nice too, running a 7k series Qualcomm MSM with a 528MHz CPU + DSP, 3.2 inch screen, HSPA data, autofocus 3.2 MP camera with video.

So after ranting about the iPhone 3GS last night, I did something rather funny – I bought an iPhone and ported my number over from T-Mobile and my Android G1.

Here was the deal.. I had an iPod Touch that I was using at work and the gym and all that. It was great for listening to music, pandora, and the slingbox app is killer. I have wifi at work, and my gym as free wifi as well, so I was pretty much set. Oh and I bought the Myst game port because thats just awesome. And then I used my Android for calls and email and all.

Well I was thinking, the Touch cost me $220 and I could just get an iPhone 3GS for $199. The plans were about the same cost, and I figured I could sell my G1 on CraigsList and try to cover most of my contract break fee.

So its been about half a day with the new iPhone and I have to say I’m not completely happy. The apps are great, and I have my pandora and Myst and all that. But I think the big surprise for me is how much it feels like the iPhone is sub par on the messaging and communications aspects than Android. Obviously there is no comparison with the quality and variety of the apps on iPhone, but here are the reasons why I think Android wins for Email/IM/Texting.

1) Exchange. My office mail is exchange and Android does not have native support. However, for $25 there is a very nice app (Moxier Mail) that is active sync capable for push and what not. Its just about as pretty as the iPhone mail app too.

2) PUSH gmail. I didnt think about this much until I started not getting gmail on the iPhone as often as my laptop would notify me that a mail was ready. On Android Gmail notification is faster than having Gmail open on your laptop. On the iPhone the only option is polling, and the shortest interval is 15min. And then you have to worry about batt life if you are goign out and polling Gmail that often all day.

3) IM on Android is great. There is a native gChat app and a native IM app that supports AIM, Yahoo, and Windows Live. The iPhone has no native IM app but there are a few in the app store obviously. The real problem is that none of them can run in the background. There is a free app that will keep you connected when you shut down the app on the phone, and it will send you an email notification when you get a message. but here is the problem with that… I can only poll my gmail account every 15min, so that makes for a lousy IM conversation if I have to wait some amount of time between 0 and 15min to get the next msg. I could use my work address and then have the notification pushed to my phone, but then I’m sending tons of mail through my work address all the time. Abnd then when I open up the mail app I might have a bunch of random emails to delete from notifications. That doesnt sound great. Of course when the Apple Notification enabled IM apps are out things should get better as you get a push notify and can just go open the app. Although even in that case, you have to re-open the app, wait for it to launch, and then wait for it to connect and all that. On Android I dont even have to open the chat program to view the message. An icon appears in the notification area, and I can slide the notification tray open and read the message, and if I click it it opens the IM app and I could respond. I like this method a LOT better.

4) Gmail acts in interesting ways on iPhone. When I compose a new message and start typing a name, the phone doesn’t seem to be aware of my Gmail contacts, it does however give me options from my work Exchange account. This seems really weird. Why would I want to send a mail to a work contact from my non-work email account? Shouldnt the mail app know which account I’m composing from? We have about 15000 employees plus many more mailing lists, and each conference room in every office in the world has an email address. When I started typing my friends name, the suggestion window showed a list of conference rooms as the only suggestions. Android on the other hand is aware of my Gmail contacts and when I start typing “Ma” it suggests “Markis”. This is nice. Also, the iPhone mail app does not group Gmail into conversations like the Gmail web app (which is such a nice feature). The Android Gmail app does. My mail looks exactly the same on the web client or the phone app.

5) Widgets. These are new in Android 1.5. I only use a couple, but I found myself missing them quickly. Widgets are little apps that run directly on your home screen and can do things when clicked or just display info. For example on my main home screen I have a calendar widget that displays the next meeting I have upcoming, the time and the location. If I click the widget it launches the calendar. On another screen I have the google widget. It has a box where I can type a search and then a browser window will come up. And finally I have a weather widget. Its small (the size of 2 iPhone app icons in a row) and it just sits on my home screen and shows me the current conditions.

Also, I have widgets that enable/disable WiFi and Bluetooth. This is super nice. When I’m not at work or the gym or home I dont need WiFi enabled and looking for networks. I can click the widget and turn WiFi off. This is a several click procedure on the iPhone. Ditto for Bluetooth.

6) Also, generally the iPhone OS feels more “dead” than Android. In Android notifications pop up, I can move though programs and swtich between things. On the iPhone, I do one thing with one app… hit the home button to close and then go do something else. Android has this concept of application stacks. If I’m working in one app, and I open another for whatever reason, a message comes in or an email, when I hit the back button the top app screen slides off and I’m back at the last app I was working with.

And then on top of that, I don’t like how some apps have their settings located in the main settings app. For example, weather bug. If I go to settings and scroll down there are the options for configuring it. But I can’t get to the settings when I’m in the app. So if I want to change from F to C temperatures, I have to close the app, go find settings, scroll around, change stuff, go back to the home screen and then launch weather bug again. Urbanspoon, snaptell, and others do this as well. I find it odd.

So here is my great dilemma for the evening. What do I do? The iPhone is vastly superior in the areas of music, games, and nifty apps. But Android is superior in how it handles email, IM, and other communictions.

My thought right now is that I think I would prefer better communication on my phone, and would use the games and nifty apps more when I’m not driving or out running around town. So I;m coming back to the 2 device solution as the winner for me right now. I have the iPod touch at the office so I can listen to music, watch slingbox, etc etc when im in the lab, and then have my G1 for calls and email.

Obviously this isnt an idea solution, and I wish it could be fixed. Apple needs to revamp the look and feel of the iPhone soon or more people might catch on to how out of date it seems to feel compared to Android or Palm’s WebOS. For example, the way icons are arranged on the iPhone is limited. They are in a grid and you can just move them around, but they auto fill up and to the left… Android is also a grid style layout, but I can put any icon anywhere and have blank spaces wherever I want. AND I dont have to have all my app icons out on my home screens. There is a tray tab at the bottom that you can pull up to show all icons and all apps installed. I can drag any that I want to my home screens if I want faster access. This makes even more sense when you can actually have a background image that you see for more than the 3.5 seconds it takes to unlock the iPhone. The black background needs to go…

I actually like the Palm Pre way of doing things even more. You have a task bar along the bottom, and then can open a tray in an Android fashion to apps you dont have in the task bar. And you get a nice clean desktop… and if you have any apps open, they appear as cards that you can swipe between or close. This is one area Android needs to add – an easy way to kill apps, not having to wait for the garbage collection system to kill it off to recover resources. UPDATE: I got a demo Pre from a Sprint store today and used it for about 30min. While it is an impressive device and has a lot going for it, I still prefer Android for now. Mainly because of the lack of apps, but also, the version 1 software seems to be a bit slow. Even though the Pre has the same Cortex CPU as the new 3GS, the system hesitates when launching apps and that was annoying. Also, after 30 min of email, txt, and web surfing I can’t say I’m a big fan of the keyboard, its just a bit too cramped, and there is no option to use a soft keyboard. Although, given how small the device is an on screen keyboard may not work well at all. So, for now, in my book Android is still the winner.

Oh, and one point about the screens between the two devices. I think the iPhone has a slightly better screen, but it look more pixelated due to being the same resolution, but larger physically. Its hard to say if I have a preference. I guess the G1 looks a bit smoother, but the iPhone seems to be a bit brighter and just looks better for some reason (except the pixels).

Another thing about Android are the context menus. Hold your finger down over an item or icon or the background of the home screen and a menu will appear with options. This makes it easy to do quite a few thigns.. and I found myself missing them on the iPhone.

For example, in Android, if I click and hold on a mail item or IM convo or txt message thread, a menu pops up and I can delete the thread. On the iPhone I have to click “edit” and then click the little red icon thing next to the thread and then a delete button appears on the other side and then I click that.

Or, if I’m viewing a txt thread, on the iPhone I have to scroll all the way to the top of the convo to find the “call” button. On Android, I just click and hold any message in the thread from the other person and a menu pops up and I can click call.

If I want to change my background image on my home screen, I just click and hold on the background and a menu pops up with options… one of them is change background. On the iPhone I have to find the settings app icon and launch that then select background.

Right now I’m leaning towards going back to my 2 device solution tomorrow and just deal with the fact that the iPhone doesnt cut it in terms of notifications, IM and email, but it rocks for fun apps and media. And reactivate my G1 so I can have the goodness that is Android for communications.

The iPhone 3GS came out today. And as always, there was just about as much media coverage as ever. Pictures of long lines, and people all excited about shelling out more money to Apple and ATT. While I think the improvements are nice, and the new 3.0 software has some cool-ish things, I’m still not at all interested in buying one. Heres why:

The big features of the 3.0 software that everyone is talking about are:

– Copy/Paste
I have this on Android, and most other smart phones do this. Pure catch up

– Landscape keyboard
Really? Only just now getting this?

– Type new messages while the old is still sending
This is a feature? I can do this on Android, or better yet, type a message, send it, go do something else, and still have my streaming music player open in the background.

– Spotlight search
This is very cool, and a nice addition

– YouTube video upload
Android, Pre, etc can do this already.

– Turn by Turn nav
Nice, but Pre had it out of the box, most all Verizon phones have this as well.

– MMS*
Welcome to the 21st century iPhone! Oh wait ATT still doesnt support this…

– Notifications
Nifty I guess, but my Android phone notifies me all the time, and Androids notification system is far better. More on this later

And the new 3GS hardware itself has some new toys:

– Compass
Ok, I have this on Android and I rarely use it, I wouldnt switch phones for this

– Video recording
Again, this is not new and somethign that should have been there a long time ago.

– Tethering
ATT is killing this, so no point in upgrading for it. T-Mobile wont let Android either. VZ lets you, and its pretty fast too.

– Voice control
Could be interesting, I would have to see how it actaully works in practice. I can do voice google searches already on my Android, but I rarely use it.

– Better battery
This would be by far the best part of the new HW. If the batt is much better a lot of people will be happy.

– Faster processor. This is the new Cortex chip, so should be a nice speed improvement. But the Pre has this chip too… and the Toshiba G01 has a Snapdragon that will toast anything else… so not a wild technology leap, but still a good upgrade.

Notifications were one of the biggest things hyped about the new 3.0 software. This is Apples answer to the cries for multitasking. But this still won’t matter. For example, say I have a notifications enabled IM app, and then I go off and open Pandora and listen to some tunes. I get an IM and I get “notified” however that happens to look on the phone’s UI. If I switch to the IM app, I still have to kill pandora and my music goes away.

Now, lets look at this scenario on Android. I’m playing music on fast.fm. I get an IM on gChat. It pops up in the notifications area and I can simple slide the notifcations bar down, read the message and be done. Or, I can click on it and gChat opens and I can respond. And guess what? My streaming music is still playing!

In the end, I this won’t stop the complaints about no multitaksing, it will just finally make some things actually work ok on the phone – IM clients and the like.

So for me, while I love the physical design of the phone, and the interface is so nice and polished, I just don’t see how I could upgrade and lose out on things I do the most – IM and txting, and being able to do those things while I have whatever else I want running at the same time. Oh ya, and ATT still has a sucky network…

Billshrink.com is an interesting site that lets you compare cell phones and services. They have a graphics that compares some pertinent features of the 3 big smartphones.

A few interesting points about this. The storage capacity is the base amount (or with the Pre the only amount). The G1 looks bad, but then again, it has a micro SD slot so you can put whatever you want in there.

Battery life for the G1 looks bad as well, but this is very different from other data (see last post) where standby was over 300hrs. However, as a G1 owner, I can say that standby time is not stellar, and I don’t think its really 300hrs.

Voice commands are interesting. The new Android 1.5 software has Google voice search. Which is interesting I guess, but most of the time I’m using my cell, its not ideal conditions for voice commands.

The app store should have listed an approximate number of apps available. Obvious the Apple App Store is the huge winner. Android Market isn’t bad, several thousand apps now. The Palm Catalog is new and has less than 20 apps, but we should give it a few months before passing judgement.

Multitasking is slightly misleading on the iPhone 3GS. The new 3.0 software has “notifications” so things like IM can “run” in the background. Or at least you could stay logged in and be notified when a new message comes in. Of course this isn’t real multitasking. And there is no way (that I have seen) to let 3rd party apps hook various system features. Android is great at this.

Finally, the thing that hurts the iPhone most in this chart is the service plan. ATT is more expensive than plans from T-Mobile or Sprint. I shopped plans myself, and I do a lot of txting and data, but don’t need a lot of minutes. Sprint ended up being cheapest – about $55 a month plus their free night minutes start at 7pm! T-mobile (my current carrier) was next cheapest at about $70. The win with them is the “My Favs”. I get unlimited calling any time to any three numbers. I use the Phonalyzr app to keep track of who most of my minutes go to, and set them as my favs. I have never gone over my minutes. ATT is fairly expensive by comparison. $20 extra just for unlimited messaging! My $25 unlimited data plan from T-Mobile includes unlimited SMS and MMS.

Bottom line from this graphic is the iPhone still has the edge in a apps and storage. But carrier selection hurts and still no true multitasking is a bummer. However, if the notifications service works well, that might be good enough for most people.

I’d been a Verizon customer for quite a few years and loved the service, coverage was great, 3G was fast, and for the most part customer service was good. Even the plans were ok.

But more and more it seems like VZ is falling behind in the phone department. Cruising their website shows a mediocre selection and some downright odd handsets.

Apple initially talked to VZ about the iPhone, and for whatever reason, they didn’t take it. Sure, it was probably a risk then, and maybe they would have had to give up a little control to do it.. but you know they are kicking themselves now.

Then came Android, and all the talk about how VZ had a falling out with the Open Handset Alliance. It seems they have rectified this, but still, there have been no handsets announced, and just rumors and statements saying they are coming.

And then VZ goes buck nutty about the Balckberry Storm. Initially it looked pretty good. BB has a great reputation for email devices, and a full touchscreen BB seemed pretty cool. I had one for about 6 months, and I wasn’t impressed, but thats another post.

And now Sprint has the Pre. I’ve played around with it a few times. Its a great phone, and a definite competitor. If they get their app store off the ground, this could be good times.

So, VZ, with the best network in the country, is left with nothing, while all the other big networks have a signature phone. They need to put down the beer and get with it. VZ is a joint venture with Vodafone… and Voda got the very cool HTC Magic. Why not VZ?

I switched to T-Mo to get an G1, and love Android. But I would switch back to VZ in a heartbeat if any one of the Android, iPhone, Pre options were available.

Ah, spring. Birds, leaves on trees, outdoor events, maybe some good beer. And thousands of rabid apple fanboys converging on San Francisco for the annual love-in with Steve & Co.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Apple a lot. In fact I’m writing this post on my MacBook Pro with some sweet Mac software called MarsEdit. But I’m just not so sold on them that I overlook the somewhat obvious issues that Apple can have.

Lets start with the MacBook announcement. Better price, this is good, especially given all the “I’m a PC and I’m cheap” commercials of late. Also, finally removing the ExpressCard slot was nice. I’ve never used mine, and don’t think I ever will. But an SD slot would be so nice. Maybe not nice enough to pay for a new system, but this is a win. But a non-removable battery?? Seriously Apple, why? Every other notebook on the planet has a user changeable battery. So now I have to make an appointment with a “genius” and wait around while someone does this for me. Lame, not a win.

Snow Leopard. Big win here with the $29 upgrade price. Microsoft should really remember this someday. But then again, the list of new features is fairly tame. Sure there are under the hood improvements, but we’ll have to wait for the upgrade to see if its noticeable. The inclusion of OpenCL is pretty cool. I’ve been a fan of GPGPU for a while now and the usefulness of this could really be big, especially for compute intense apps like video processing or graphics apps. Not that it hasn’t been available before. NVIDIA’s CUDA package has been out for Mac OS, and could have easily been used to do much the same thing. The win with OpenCL is that it is a common standard that NVIDIA and ATI are at least somewhat on board with. So this could be a win if anyone writes apps to take advantage of it.

And now for the iPhone. I love the iPhone for many reasons, even though I don’t have one. It really kicked the wireless industry in the pants and finally got other companies really thinking about a true mobile computing platform. Unfortunately I still think there are some issues, most notably ATT. Verizon really screwed up when they passed on this.

With that said, the new 3.0 software seems like a good move in a few areas, although not as far as I would have liked to see it go. MMS support (finally) is nice, but is this really something to get excited about? I mean I’ve had MMS on cheap phones for years. Add to that that ATT won’t actually support MMS when 3.0 launches means this does nothing for anyone right now (well at least in the US).

Notifications is an interesting take on having “background” apps without fearing battery loss. Some of my friends who are rocking their 3Gs complain about battery life, so I can see where this might be an issue. But my Android phone has true background apps and I don’t have battery issues. I digress. So essentially you can register with some apple server and get push notifications on the phone that can be read with whatever app. This will be great for IM and the like where you can finally stay logged in and actually do anything on the phone. The big issue I have with this is that Apple controls the notification path. So crippling or removing services they dont like or don’t want you to have is easy. Also this is a single point fail for everything. Its better than nothing, but real background apps would have been so much better.

The 3G-S is interesting. No cosmetic updates at all, but then again the design is pretty much the coolest phone out there right now. The only thing that comes close is the new Palm Pre, but still. The 3MP camera upgrade was long long overdue. I wouldn’t even say this is a win, its a catchup. And video recording? My 9 year old little brother has a cheap Verizon phone and he takes pics and vids all the time and MMSs them to me. So no win there.

The compass is nice I guess. My Android has one, but I never really use it. I mean with GPS enabled Google Maps, why would I try to navigate on my own?

The claimed performance increase would be a big win if it is actually true across the majority of apps. But the biggest thing I read about the 3G-S was the improved battery life. This is the single biggest issue with mobiles, and the iPhone was hurting in that area as it was. So this alone would make me more interested in the phone if I was thinking about it. Which I would be, if I didn’t have to go to ATT.

Oh ya, the HSDPA+ addition. Meh. This isn’t cutting edge, many other phones with this support. The bigger question is can ATT’s network handle all these phones all wanting that much bandwidth. Will you see the 7Mb speeds in real life? Most likely not, unless you live in a small town in Kansas and are hugging the base station at midnight when everyone else is in bed.

Apple needs to be careful going forward with the iPhone. They are no longer the far and away winners in the smartphone world. The Palm Pre is a gorgeous device with a nice OS and a lot of good features, and once Android gets a better handset, it will be right up there too. So Apple needs to innovate, not just sprinkle some “updates” and hope to keep gaining market share. While they still hold the edge over Android in handset design, UI quality, and amount of apps, I think the Pre wins over the iPhone in several areas – background apps, better app management in the UI, and real background apps. If the Pre can get a sizable app base, this could be a bg problem for Apple.