@johnbeynon

Confessions of a code Junkie and anything else i fancy!

Quick Android Update

Just a quick update 2 weeks on with my HTC Desire.

I ended up rooting the phone lastnight - for a number of reasons. Firstly to be rid of all the useless customisations Orange had made to the phone - I mean, why do they bother? They added 5 game demos of pretty naff games which couldn't be removed, their own AppStore and a few other 'Orange' apps. Secondly, I've been experiencing pretty poor battery life - in a scientific experiment over lunch yesterday I lost 10% of my battery compared to a colleagues 2% with the same features switched on so I decided it was about time that I went back to the HTC default ROM.

It was a painless exercise which had no dramas attached so now I'm back to the vanilla HTC Desire ROM and so far am experiencing WAY better battery life.

Overcoming the Android MarketPlace problem

With the Android MarketPlace set to pass the 50,000 application count just in time for Google I/O later this month finding decent apps is getting tough, the same applies in the Apple AppStore. The Android market place has grown almost 6 times the size in a year (Apple only 3 times) [source] but let's not forget that Apple heavily restricts apps that appear in the store whereas with Android anything goes - but then that's not to say that this is the full count of available applications. There's nothing to stop me creating my own Android app and selling it directly from my own website via download and these numbers won't go reported. Given that both platforms have been out for similar amounts of time the Android numbers are low but the explosion that we're now seeing in the shere number of available handsets across the operators is going to help drive these numbers up at a massive rate.

The Android MarketPlace app is much like the Apple Appstore, you see feature a few 'Featured' Applications and then can find applications by categories or search - there's no popularity, download count filters etc. There's a bunch of websites that provide an alternative view on the marketplace with some real value added like SlideMe, but I really like one called AppBrain. As well as showing you application rankings, downloads, categorizations, summary of your spending - they also provide their own Android Application.  What's neat about it is that you are able to manage the applications both from your phone or their website in that you can set an application to install from the website and it would then appear on your phone, uninstall it etc but you can also sync and share your installed applications list, here's my list of installed applications for starters so let's see yours!

Saving battery life on Android devices

If you're used to the iPhone you'll be well accustomed to probably charging your handset once a day, that is, if you use it for listening to music, push email, browsing over 3G/Wifi etc. The HTC Desire (as most Android devices are) is no different to the iPhone, it's a hungry little beast when you've got all the stuff it's able to do switched on - but thankfully there are ways to add a little more life.

I started hunting around for a power profile management app and found Setting Profiles - it's available in a lite and paid version ($3.95 - don't forget that if it doesn't work for you just uninstall and get a refund) - where the lite version is limited to a single rule. The idea of the app is simple. You create rules (multiple if required) which then activate profiles. Rules are based on conditions which can vary from a simple time period, an entry in the calendar, battery state, location and a few others. Locations can be either based on a connected wifi network or lat/long data which can be retrieved by GPS or cell information. Profiles allow you to control the state that the various phone features are in, wifi on/off, airplane on/off, volumes, gps, auto-sync etc etc.
 
I looked at a typical day and my movements and ended up with a couple of rules;
  • I get up at 7am (after going to bed around 11pm) so I created a profile that enables Airplane mode and activate that between 23:00-07:00 - who want's to be disturbed during those hours?
  • When I'm in the office (identified by a wifi network) I really don't need push email so I disable Auto-Sync, GPS, set 42% volume.
  • When I'm at home (identified by cell) I turn off GPS and turn on Wifi
  • Should my battery drop below 10% I turn off everything
Outside of these rules I have auto-sync on and GPS on when I need it - I still need to refine these rules a little bit to make sure I'm not wasting battery life but it definitely seems to have improved my battery life and prevented those calls/text at night!

     

Taking screen shots on Android devices

There doesn't seem to be an easy way like on the iPhone (pressing both buttons at the same time) to take a screen shot on Android devices - however if you've got the Android SDK installed it's pretty easy.
  1. Connect your device to your computer via USB
  2. On the device (Android 2.1) go to Settings > Applications > Development and enable 'USB Debugging'
  3. In your Android SDK folder run the DDMS app in the tools folder
  4. From the left panel select your device and press CTRL + S
  5. Now find the screen you want to screen shot and click 'Refresh' and then save the image.

My move to Android from iPhone

First up, let me start by saying that my move from Apple's iPhone to Android is nothing to do with the recent events in regards to Adobe Flash - I'm not a big proponent of Flash, I actively block Flash on all my desktops, I'm a registered Apple iPhone developer (from the brief moment that I thought I could learn Objective-C) and this won't be the start of me ditching Apple products. 

So why have I moved to Android?  

I don't see that the iPhone is worth £200 over the cost of another make of handset
 
In preparing this post I realised that that statement is a little strange given I'm a Mac user. I'm more than happy to pay 'over the odds' for Mac hardware - yet I don't see that the iPhone is now worth paying an extra £200 'per contract' for the handset given the competition. I'd expect that when the iPhone 4/HD is released in June it will cost around the £200 mark much like previous versions have on a minimum of £30 a month contract usually over 18 months meaning it carries a minimum cost of £719 over the contract period - plus this cost increases as you increase the storage capacity (SD cards anyone?). Here in the UK, most Android devices are offered 'free' on contract so you don't even have to pay the upfront amount for the handset. 
Enter the HTC Desire running Android 2.1 with HTC Sense. With specs closely matching Google's own Nexus One (and thoughts that the HTC Desire is just the generally available version of the Nexus 1) many are saying that it is one of the first phones to give the iPhone (in it's current guise) a run for it's money. It's being heavily advertised on billboards across the country, most UK operators are reporting low stocks and that they're flying out the doors.
 
Sporting the same 1Ghz SnapDragon processor, 3.7" AMOLED screen (@ 480x800 WVGA - surely Apple will somehow increase the resolution of the next generation handset) the HTC Desire is a snappy little phone plus the screen is sharp and bright. Side by side with my iPhone 3G (running iPhone 4.0) I realise just how slow the iPhone is, yes it's 1 generation old and the 3GS is faster but from what I recall from using a 3GS it's not up to the speed of the Desire.
 
Then there's Android itself. After using an iPhone for over 18 months you're well in the Apple mindset of how they want the iPhone to look and operate. All iPhone's look the same once they're unlocked with the standard 4x4 grid of icons - no wallpaper (although coming in iPhone 4.0) and certainly no desktop widgets or such like (maybe Apple will surprise us in June?) - with Android you get the option to personalize your phone, moving apps that you want quick access to to the desktop and using widgets giving you quick access to the apps you use and the information you want at your fingertips.
 
It's the little things that count...
 
If you're an iPhone user you'll know about the disconnect between your applications. Applications aren't aware of other installed applications to much of an extent (if any) - so when I tapped on an RSS feed in the Android browser and it prompted me what to do with it I felt natural - much like how a normal computer operates, in this case it was a podcast feed and I wanted it opened in Google Listen.
 
That leads me on to syncing. With the iPhone my daily routine just before bed consisted of plugging my iPhone in to sync podcasts to remove ones I've listened to and to add news ones for the next days commute. No more! There's no connecting to a computer or anything, Google Listen (Google's own podcasting app) syncs wirelessly (you can configure to only do it if on charge, wifi etc) at preset intervals - this is pretty big for me, the only downside I have is that there's no playback speed control backed into Android, but I can live with that!
 
The Android MarketPlace is an area of much discussion and often the thorn in Android's side - but it is definitely getting better and what with third party stores cropping up and sites like AppBrain Android apps are definitely improving and with the new handsets with some real horsepower we're beginning to see apps that compete with their iPhone equivalents. One thing I really like about the Android store is that you get a 24 hour grace period for purchased apps, should you no longer need it or find it doesn't do what you want you can uninstall and get a refund for the app! Google is also expected to release Froyo (next Android release) at Google I/O later this month which is expected to move much of the Android Core into MarketPlace updateable apps so that the fragmentation that Android is suffering from can be lessened.
 
Google Navigator??? Need I say more on that, who needs to spend £60 on TomTom now that Google provide turn by turn directions app for free!
 
So what in the past 7 days have I missed from my iPhone? Actually, nothing. Gaming was very 'casual' for me, in the office we'd get the weekly game of the week buzz, like Flight Control or Angry Birds but then the interest dies off (as Apple has shown) and purchased games were seldom revisited. Everything I could do on my iPhone I can still do on my Android phone, faster and usually better than the iPhone way. Who knows, maybe come June I'll regret jumping but at the moment I'm really enjoying Android!
 
Next time, some apps I've found pretty useful...