Monthly Archives: January 2011

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January 23, 2011

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Digital Lifestyle

The Ultimate smartphone?

No, I’m not talking about my month-old HTC Desire Z.

I’m thinking of the new (and as yet unreleased) Motorola Atrix 4G.  Besides the dual-core silicon running under the hood – something that seems destined for all new high-end smartphones btw – the big news for the Atrix is the “webtop” app and docking abilities. Said abilities allow your little pocket burner split personalities, shedding its smartphone skin for a laptop visage or home multimedia center duty.

Certainly sounds cool, and brings new weight to the notion of a converged device. But the problem, as I see it, is that you can’t deal with all of these persona at the same time.

Here’s the skinny.

Right now I’m in Starbucks, and I was thinking to myself; “Man, it would be nice if I had my laptop with me.” Then I thought to myself; “Hey, if I had a Moto Atrix I’d be set!”

But I wouldn’t.

For the Atrix to be useful in this situation, I’d need the laptop dock. And if I’m going to carry the dock around with me, then how is that any better or worse than carrying my netbook with me? Without the laptop dock the Atrix is no more useable than my Z.

Wait, it gets worse.

With the laptop dock, and running the webtop app, I can’t do cool things like run a Java-based SSL tunneling client to connect to my home network. And that’s just one example. What about running a development IDE?

Sure, you can run Google Docs and do any number of other cool web-based thingamijigs. But a real laptop the Atrix is not.  It’s somewhere between a netbook and a tablet, in my humble estimation.

Then there’s the multimedia dock. And again, you’ve got to look at it for what it really is. Today’s tech push into your living room is all about net-connectedness. Watch Netflix on your TV. Watch Hulu. Do it fullscreen, in full HD, at 24 to 30 FPS.

Now, you may be able to get close to some of that using the Atrix’s web-browser in webtop mode, but the jury’s still out on fullscreen performance. And that’s crucial.

You can get the fullscreen, full HD, full FPS experience using the media player in webtop mode, but my research leads me to believe that that’s for local content only. No Hulu, no Netflix, no vids from your Windows Home Server or other DLNA-graced devices.

So again – what’s the point?

Don’t get me wrong; the Atrix is a great example of pushing the boundaries when it comes to smartphone design and use. But I fear that the implementation, while abounding in gee-whiziness, doesn’t really give us anything that we can’t already get (better) by carrying the same amount of hardware. Factor in efforts like Firefox’s Weave or Opera’s Link, and the lines between your desktop and your mobile are already being blurred (I’m thinking along the lines of the vaunted Connected Client effort).

I have no doubt that people will drop large dollar bills to get an Atrix and its assorted docks. But I truly wonder if their digital lifestyles will be improved as a result of it.

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January 13, 2011

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Digital Lifestyle

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Apps that make my life easier (Droooooid Part 3)

I’m still in the process of loading up my Desire Z with cool and useful apps.  Here’s the list of ones that have made the cut, and are worth a mention.

XiiaLive

Trés useful for streaming audio from home.  You can’t change the streaming settings in the “Lite” version, but even with an 8-second buffer it’s entirely tolerable.  And the audio quality over Bluetooth A2DP is very good, much better than it was on the Touch Pro (and this is without having to tweak anything – and that’s a Very Good Thing(tm))

k9mail

Built off the source code of the native Android Mail application, this app adds such useful features as being able to specify your Sent and Trash folders when using IMAP.  This is a boon for me, since I use IMAP extensively for my personal mail.  This program finally plays nice with my mail server after some initial struggles.

KeepScreen

I couldn’t understand why my Z would turn off when Google Maps was running.  The Touch Pro never did this.  It makes sense that if you’ve got Maps open, chances are you’re navigating somewhere and you want Maps to stay open.  [Personal note: see if Google Navigation keeps the screen on]  Keep Screen will keep the screen on when certain applications are running in the foreground.  Works a treat.

PaderSyncDAV

This program allows me to access the files on my home network.  I recently uncovered a bug where I seem unable to upload files from this app.  I’ve contacted the dev and I’m hoping for a (speedy) resolution. [Update Jan 21, 2011: Worked with the dev to get this problem fixed, so it’s all good!]

Tasker

Back in the WinMo days I used Mortscript and some custom C programs to perform event-driven tasks.  In the Android world, I’ve found that Tasker can do many things I did with Mortscript – and more.  So far I’m using it to unlock the orientation sensor when I’m in the car, and to start Google Navigation when I’m in the car and external power is connected.  These two tasks alone are worth the US$6.

Pure Calendar/GridCalendar/Messenger Widget

This trio of widgets fulfills my desire to see consolidated info at a glance on my homescreen(s).  Pure Messenger Widget, in particular, is quite useful as a means to get my incoming Twitter, Facebook, GMail and SMS updates all in one place, as a scrollable list no less.  Think of FriendStream for HTC Sense, only more customizable.

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January 7, 2011

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Droooooooid – Part Deux

Many, many, many hours of work has been done since this post was posted.

The results are mostly good.  As it stands now, I’ve basically got all of the core functionality I had on the Touch Pro – plus more, obviously.  And a nice consequence of this work is that much of the processes I’ve used in the past are now somewhat simplified.

In particular, I’m quite stoked about the uber-quick WebDAV access and client-less access to the intranet.  That last one needs some security work, but it’s there and it’s a beaut.  I’m yet to test streaming from the Home Audio streaming zones, but that’ll likely happen in 1 hour or less (once I go out for lunch).

I also made some useability improvements to the fileserv, which is what allows me to send links and files to the phone.  Google has a Firefox and Chrome extension that allows you to do this, but I prefer to roll my own solutions.  Additionally, this one doesn’t require any special software that somebody isn’t likely to already have.

Truthfully the fileserv stuff has had a “todo – enhanced security” line item for some time now.  That’s not resolved yet, but I imagine I’ll be using this facility more going forward and that alone may prompt me to get all this security stuff nailed down.

So what’s not working?

Mail isn’t 100%.  I worked with the developer of my server software to iron out one bug, and that was great, but as it stands now the native Android Mail client is missing some core functionality (ability to set trash/sent folders is the biggest, and the ability to filter IMAP folders) so I’m using the k9mail client instead.  Unforunately that client isn’t doing two-phase deletions/moves properly.  So for now I’ve got to use both clients.  A bummer for now, but hopefully it will get resolved soon.

What’s changed?

My particular brand of push notifications have changed.  You may or may not know that certain events (types of mail, surveillance) generate notifications on the phone.  In the WinMo world these notifications were delivered via SMS. Some would automagically (courtesy of PushEffect) tell Outlook Mobile to connect and sync my mail.  That last little bit simulated push email, and while I have no such facility now (but may again play with IMAP IDLE) it’s sort of a moot point now; both Mail and k9mail are so fast to sync folders that I now do the process manually, which is really no more effort than opening Outlook Mobile to read the mail I just got notified about.  I could probably spend some time in the future to replicate the sync functionality on Android, to operate in the same manner it did in WinMo.  Chances are that that won’t happen any time soon though.

So anyway, the notifications were delivered by SMS, by way of an Email-to-Text gateway supplied by my mobile carrier.  And they being the gougers they are, they decided that I had to pay for the privilege of getting these missives directly instead of having their own servers cache them and send me stupid “you have mail, reply R to read” SMS messages in their stead.  That always bothered me, and while I took some baby steps in the past month or so to get around that in Windows Mobile, I now utilize a GMail account in Android to get around it completely.

Both methods offer quick delivery of said notifications.  The GMail method has no length restrictions, which is good, while the SMS method had no data usage, which was good.  But with 6GB of data allotment each month, data usage isn’t really a concern.  What is a concern is roaming data.  With data-based notifications I simply won’t get any notifications at all if data is off due to roaming.  So I’ve got to think about this one.

Nevertheless, being able to get of the monthly charge is a  Good Thing(tm).  Worst case?  I switch back to SMS-based notifications while out of the country, and use a little hack to deliver the essence of the message without the direct-email-to-text feature.

So that’s that for now.  I feel that a Part 3 will be coming soon.  Stay tuned.

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January 2, 2011

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Droooooooid!

Okay, so I’m not rocking a Moto Droid, but I am now rocking an HTC Desire Z.  The wifey helped to make this happen so thanks go out to her.

It’s currently 2:47AM so this will be short to begin with; I’ll have to come back later to flesh out this post a little more.

First impressions:

  • I will not be rocking CM6.1 or CM7 (?) on this device.  As it turns out, HTC Sense is cooler than I thought, and it’s a more polished experience than standard Android.  Yes, I realize that this places me at the mercy of HTC/Bell to feed any potential update craving that may arise in the future, but for now I’m willing to live with that
  • The screen is beautfil.  Nuff said.
  • Hinge isn’t the snappiest but I can definitely live with it.
  • It’s really nice to have a phone that actually hangs up when I tell it to (and not a few seconds later – Touch Pro, here’s looking at you kid)
  • It’s a little weird going into so many apps and just… leaving them to go elsewhere.  I could do this with the Touch Pro as well, but given the speed of that device it wasn’t often that I’d go into 6-7 apps in one sitting.  Perhaps it’s the new-car-small of the Z that’s got me bouncing around in apps (particularly as I’m still trying to get the thing setup to my liking).  However, I will say that some apps do seem to restart when you go back to them, and that’s definitely weird coming from WinMo, which would leave apps open until memory constraints forced them closed.  I don’t think I’ve hit any memory issues on the Z yet, so it may just be that Android is a little more aggressive in the task management department.
  • Battery life isn’t as good as the Touch Pro.  Again I’ll say that I’m using the device extensively in order to get it setup, and I have a feeling that two mail apps were trying to IMAP IDLE on my mail account – a consequence of not having my mail setup correctly yet.
  • I never thought I’d say this, but I like that I can link my local contacts to my Facebook contacts.  Having this integration – provided by HTC Sense – is nice, although I’m still adamant that I wouldn’t go so far as Windows Phone 7’s penchant for throwing Facebook photos into your local photo gallery.
  • L-O-V-E the way that the notification bar works.  Very cool to finally be able to see what a notification is  about without having to make any overt gestures or load the relevant app.
  • Maps on Android is AWESOME.  Especially Maps 5.0.  Check it out if you’re rocking an Android phone.

I’m sure there’s more, and they’ll come when I follow-up on this post.  It may be possible that many of these enhancements could be had on the WinMo platform, particularly considering that HTC Sense is available (indeed, was conceived) on Windows Mobile.  Still, the speed of my Touch Pro can’t compare with the Z, not to mention the screen resolution, vibrancy and size.  I will say that for now I prefer the layout of the hardware keyboard on the Touch Pro, but that could be a case of a year’s worth of familiarity with said keyboard.

One negative I noticed today – and I hope that this is was an isolated occurence – was trouble staying connected to the Bluetooth kit in the car.  I had problems like that on WinMo, where Bluetooth on the phone would actually turn off.  My solution was to write a native program and some Mortscript to force Bluetooth on whenever it inexplicably turned off.  Well, it seems that the Z’s Bluetooth is staying on, but the connection is dropping.  Will investigate more later.

Off to bed now.