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toblix

Android

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Today, I went from Windows Mobile 6.1 on a HTC Touch Diamond to Android on a Google Dev Phone, ad it's like traveling ten years ahead in a time machine.

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I'm considering buying a G1. I really need to get rid of the crappy Windows Mobile phones.

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Don't think about it. Just do it. It's fucking amazing. At least the Android Dev Phone is, and I doubt T-Mobile or whoever it is could manage to fuck it up that badly.

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G1 was made by HTC...

And HTC also made the two Windows Mobile phones I own.

There's just one thing about Android which I don't like, and that's the lack of support for SyncML. The funambol tool for G1 doesn't sync a lot, which is a shame.

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What's a realistic battery life figure, toblix, for decent usage during a day? I'm hearing sub-4-hour horror stories at the moment.

verohari's keen to make the jump to the G1 next month. But I'm currently suggesting she go for the Nokia E71 at the minute, based on the apparently pathetic battery life of the G1.

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I wouldn't know about battery life. It's not an issue for me, as I keep it connected both at home and at work. I've also heard it's terrible.

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From my (re)search the battery time of the G1 isn't that bad. You have to make sure you properly charge it at the beginning (i.e. 2-3 full discharge-charge cycles to train the battery). Also, turn of the things which are on by default like GPS and Wifi. Turn down the backlight, and shorted the timeout. Then it should last a day or so with normal usage. My s730 doesn't last very long either when I enable wifi etc. and use it a lot. Anyway, in a month or so I'll know what well the G1 works.

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Also, using Locale, I have it automatically switch Wifi on when I'm at home or at work, and off when I'm not, based on GPS/AGPS.

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No, I've never actually used one. I can only assume it's probably not as well designed, GUI-wise, as the iPhone, although I'm totally and fuckingly blown the fuck away by how fucking smooth it is. Since I started it, I've launched all these games and programs, and it's still acting like I just booted it up. Although the programs are not fully running while they're in the background, they're still able to do their stuff, checking my GPS, sensors, reading SMS messages and so on, and they come up almost instantly when I open them again. So far it seems almost perfect to me. The browser seemed excellent, too. I know my Diamond ran Opera, which is supposed to be awesome, but the Android browser is a hundred times faster, and had quick, smooth transitions, zooming, tiled views of multiple pages, etc.

An important point is that I'm comparing this with my experience of Windows Mobile 6.1. Although I flashed it with an extremely fast ROM, I assume there are quicker, beefier phones running it that make things go faster. Still, these are all running a shell on top of the old, boring Windows Mobile, which, to me, Android surpasses in every way.

Anyway I'm sure the iPhone is better in a lot of ways. It certainly looks better, although I was surprised at how good looking my Dev Phone was. I haven't tried the music player on Android, but I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone was way ahead on that one either.

Anyway, no, sorry. There are probably thousands of comparison threads around the internets, though.

Oh, and the trackball control works really well.

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Three friends with these say the battery life is rubbish (they love them all the same though). Their verdict: You're lucky to get a full day's usage out of it, and using the GPS cuts it down ridiculously.

It's possible but not certain that software patches may improve this somewhat.

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can you quantify rubbish?

every time people report something about the battery time of the G1 they leave out actual numbers and phone activity.

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Ok, so I just figured out the dev phone is actually the same as the G1. However, the dev phone costs $425 and the G1 costs 500 euro. Ok, you don't get an 8GB MicroSD and no warranty, but you do get an unrestrained phone.

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Yeah, with the Dev Phone you get an 1GB card and an SIM-unlocked phone with root access. I don't know if the G1 has the awesome USB debugging feature.

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The G1 is locked down, i.e. no root. So, I think I'm going to order a dev phone, considering I'm saving over 120 euros on that.

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Yeah, that's a good point. It's because the applications are protected by putting them in a location where the normal user does not have access. A root user, which is that the Dev Phone gives you, would be able to copy these around willy-nilly. It's kind of silly, but it's not a big issue for me, since I'm more interested in the developer aspects of it. One ironic point, though, is that as a developer you can't see your own non-free applications in the Market.

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f'ing f, they're out of dev phones... got to wait :/

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wee... dev phone arrived

now, if only t-mobile wouldn't behave as a useless piece of shit

WLAN support sucks a bit

Edited by elmuerte

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WLAN support sucks a bit

Really? I was really impressed by it. I just selected the various networks I use to come across, entered the passkey, and I've never thought about it again. Are you having trouble connecting, or what?

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That's the problem, it currently only support PSK. I need PEAP.

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Have there been any additional phones announced, other than the G1, that are going to be running Android? I've got a Blackberry right now for work, and while I can get an iPhone, I'm thinking an Android phone may be nicer.

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