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December 15, 2020

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Wear (OS) have you been?

So way back in 2014 or 2015 (or 2016?) I decided to dive into wearables with the original Moto 360. It wasn’t a straightforward decision mind you; I had a number of mechanical watches that I liked to wear so the biggest conundrum was what to do with those watches – and the fashion options that they posed – if I went with the smartwatch.

Truthfully the two really are mutually exclusive. If you opt for a smartwatch it necessarily means that there are “smart” features that you want to use which would be unavailable to you when wearing a traditional watch. It really seemed like a one-or-the-other lifestyle choice.

I got around the problem at the time by thinking more about how I’d use those “smart” features. And it dawned on me that in pre-COVID times I would be sitting at my work desk Monday to Friday with my phone on said desk and within easy reach. If I wanted to check an incoming notification the phone would be right there, so there really was no need be notified on my wrist as well. And since this was before heart rate monitors and step counters, it really did come down to whether or not I was going to receive notifications on my wrist

BUT – on the weekends and on some evenings after work it made sense to receive notifications on my wrist, because my phone might be in my pocket where I either might not feel the vibration alert or might be otherwise engaged and unable to easily fish the phone out of my pocket. Given that I’ve culled my notifications down to only those that are most important (no Facebook or Twitter notifications here folks), having a smartwatch at those times actually seemed like a very good idea.

So that was it then. I wore the 360 on the weekends and stuck with my traditional watches while at work.

And this mostly worked. Eventually the 360 died – somewhat as a result of this schedule, but that’s neither here nor there – and I opted not to renew my membership in the wearables club.

Why?

Recall that the 360 was among the first group of Android smartwatches. And there were warts. Performance, battery life (both for the watch and the phone), occasional disconnects – those things weighed on the experience to the point that I couldn’t justifying dropping hundreds of dollars again.

That all changed a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve started seeing more and more people sporting smartwatches – both of the Apple and Android variety. I don’t tend to follow trends, but it had become clear that wearables were no longer a trend and had become much more mainstream. And I had kept abreast of developments in the Android Wear world – now called “Wear OS” – and the various hardware options.

In particular the Fossil watches had been getting good reviews for their performance – thanks to their generous memory – and all-day battery life. Sooo… I decided to wade back in once Fossil held their latest Black Friday sale.

And can I just say – I’m impressed!

It may be the perfect combination of great battery life on my phone (which is also fairly new) and on the watch but I can honestly say that I’m not experiencing any negatives after 2 weeks of sporting the Gen 5 Carlyle HR. I also imagine that COVID has contributed to the experience – imagine that – since all of my mechanical watches have dead batteries and going to a jeweller is both a safety issue and seems strangely antiquated.

I’m not one to use apps apps apps on my wearable, so it’s no surprise that battery is good. To me a watch needs to be a watch first, so to that end I’ve enabled the always-on display and actually disabled lift-to-wake and tap-to-wake. AOD takes a hit on battery, but turning off the digitizer and the sensors seems to counter that – so that I recently got 1.5 days at of regular use and threw the watch back on the charger after another 0.5 days in time-only mode. The battery wasn’t exhausted, but I did want the smart features back.

And let’s not even talk about the convenience of Google Pay on the wrist when going through a drive thru. And adding heart rate info to my fitness data is also a plus.

Yes, I’m very happy with the Gen 5 Carlyle. So much so that I’ve already ponied up for additional watch bands. I can see now why these things are becoming more and more mainstream. They serve their primary purpose as a watch, and when used properly they actually serve the additional purpose of simplifying your digital lifestyle. Win-win in my book.

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April 17, 2013

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Here’s to you HP Touchpad

The (self-given) gift that keeps on giving?

Once upon a time, I brought home a shiny, almost-firesale-priced 16GB HP Touchpad, with the desire to get in on the tablet game and, hopefully, have a useful media-consumption device that anybody in the family could use.  I went through a WebOS phase, believing that it Kept It Simple Stupid(tm) while also allowing functionality approximating that of a true multi-user implementation.  And indeed, the little-tablet-that-could saw its fair share of Castle and Young and the Resless (the former for me, the latter for the significant other).

And as support waned for WebOS, I tinkered with Android – and Android eventually preempted WebOS, the latter of which saw its use decline drastically once an issue popped up that made it inconvenient to apply community homebrew patches and updates.

But the device soldiered on, and it continued to be a media-consumption device – although my heart-of-hearts still yearned for a true multi-user solution, particularly one that would allow me to move seamlessly between my personal Android phone and the Android tablet.

Said Android version was pegged at 4.0 for  many months, until the plunge was made to install 4.1 – if only to gain some speed and newness, if not multi-user capability.  Ultimately 4.2 was the goal, and with it the realization of true multi-user support.

Meanwhile, other factors conspired to reduce the Touchpad’s daily handling; it became more relegated to spending its days basking in the electric warmth of its Touchstone charging base.  The onslaught of Plex and Roku spelled the introduction of have-it-your-way TV consumption, enabling dead-simple large-screen (and small-screen) viewing as well as the ability to resume playback across multiple devices.  But even Plex and Roku had to play second-fiddle to the ever-increasing demands of two active and highly-inquisitive young boys.

So what of the Touchpad today, and the myth of one needing a tablet?

Well… I’ve never believed that one needs a tablet, but I’ve always believed that there is real utility in the device.  And despite the explosion in phone screen sizes in the past year – such that even yours truly will likely go 5″+ on my next phone upgrade – my experience with the Touchpad has spoiled me.  When at home, there is simply no doubt in my mind that a larger tablet can offer a more immersive, more productive and rewarding experience than a smartphone.  And to substantiate that claim, I recently played with a Nexus 7 for the second time in my life, except this time I came away thinking that nothing short of a 10″ display (or perhaps 8″…) makes any sense.  The Nexus 7 quite literally felt like a phone – and worse yet, one with a horribly-large bezel.

(can I just say that there are way too many hyphens in this post…)

What I like about the Touchpad – and probably any other 10″ tablet – is that it is big.  And again, given that my idea of the ideal tablet use-case is for media consumption in the home, mobility does not enter the equation.  Would a 12″ tablet be better?  Perhaps, but a 10″ is Good Enough(tm) while a 7″ – in my mind – is Too Little, Too Late(tm).

So with the kids in bed and Plex/Roku beckoning, what sort of media consumption can a tablet really provide in my household?

Not a difficult question to answer – the portable kind.  But more importantly, there’s enough of an overlap between a tablet and smartphone – in concept and software – that all of the things I use my smartphone for at home can easily be done on the tablet, and with a larger screen to boot.  The benefits are twofold; again, the larger screen – and critically, the abundant battery that doesn’t need to be sufficiently charged if I need to go on the road for some unknown reason.

Basically, I can put down the phone (or more likely, slip it in my pocket) and do everything on the tablet instead.  My digital existence is “in the cloud” (both private and public), and the holdouts are being likewise relegated.  This allows choice – and boy do I love Choice(tm) – with the decision being completely dependent on which device I feel like using rather than what tasks I want to perform.

This is what multi-user enables.  I am the only person who uses my phone, but the tablet is intended for anybody in the family.  Even if WebOS had a wicked-awesome Plex client, the card-stacking metaphor that I invented previously would not allow for the seamless shift between personal smartphone and family tablet… when it came time to access my digital existence.

Sooooo…. more than a year after being welcomed into my home, the trusty old Touchpad is finally starting to fulfill its destiny.  It’s now sporting an alpha 4.2 ROM – and with it, true multi-user capability.  It’s a liberating experience; yesterday evening, my smartphone was at 99% charge by bedtime simply because it had been on the charging pad all evening, yet I read more Pocket(tm)’d articles, flipped through more Distro mags and trundled through more videos in my Youtube subscriptions than on any evening in recent memory.  And in a counter-intuitive twist, I fully expect that that level of consumption will not continue; not because the “fad” will wear off, but rather, because there are no barriers to getting that stuff done.  There are no battery concerns, there’s no weird logging-in to be done (aside from selecting my user profile on the lockscreen and unlocking with my preferred security method).  There’s no pressure; there’s just this relaxing knowledge that the decision to do that stuff is based solely on Time and Desire; once those technology-unladen conditions are met, I can wash dishes and watch Top Shelf, or lean against a wall and thumb through mail, or recline on the couch and catch The Daily Show.

Or I can defer to another day or time, knowing how easy the decision will be to choose the Right Device(tm) for the Right Time(tm).


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February 2, 2013

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Blackberry will be a strong 3rd, and it won’t matter

So the company once known as “Research in Motion” has finally played its hand, and the reviews are mixed.

Personally, I side with Goldman Sachs and I’ve tweeted as much – I truly believe that Blackberry will be a strong 3rd in the smartphone market.  And I’m going to attempt to explain why.

When people think of RIM and its long slide from #1 in its industry, they instinctively think of Nortel – another Canadian tech darling that rode at the top of its industry, but now exists as a small part of a larger patent portfolio.  Management issues aside, both companies found themselves in a position of increased competition and eventually lost much of their perceived relevance.

Yet, I still believe strongly in Blackberry’s prospects – on the mobility side at least.  Part of that is of their own doing, the rest is a function of their industry.

Industry first.  Blackberry’s competition consists of Android, iPhone and Windows Phone.  And while you can argue the finer points of who has executed most impressively with respect to O/S, ecosystem and application offerings, you can’t deny that each company manufacturers a smartphone experience that is starkly different from the others.  Apple’s iOS devices offer a curated, walled garden.  Windows Phone, a less-curated walled garden but a very polarizing user interface with strict design guidelines.  Android represents the wild-west of the smartphone industry; no restrictions, and vendor-specific customizations.

Each platform offers a modern version of a smartphone operating system.  Each platform is supported by an application and media ecosystem – arguably of differing sizes and content quality, but the infrastructure is there.  So on the face of it, you have four competing products and solutions, all of which represent the state of the art in the smartphone space, all of which offer distinctive user experiences.

That being said, Blackberry no longer needs to compete on specifications alone, or price alone.  They’ve differentiated sufficiently on standout, unique features – Blackberry Hub, Blackberry Balance, Blackberry Peek, an interesting take on the homescreen – that they have a compelling offering in BB10.  Note that I’m not saying that these are good features; just different.

That’s the industry that Blackberry is playing in.  And it’s fortunate that they’re not aiming to take on iPhone or Android, because they honestly have no chance of gaining any signficant market share from those competitors.  However I do believe that they stand a very strong chance of stealing market share from Windows Phone – and that comes down to the Blackberry name and legacy.

My evidence is subjective.  iPhone and Android are considered the gold standards when it comes to smartphones and app stores, yet I’m still surprised that I continue to see people clinging to their older Blackberry devices.  Meanwhile, Microsoft has a 1 1/2 year head-start on Blackberry yet they’ve failed to establish themselves as a bona-fide 3rd.

What is it about Blackberry that inspires so much loyalty?

I don’t have the answer, and while I’m under no allusion that the suggestion of loyalty  is enough to bring the masses flocking, I can’t deny that there’s something compelling about the Waterloo-based company’s iconic products.  I never see a Windows Mobile phone in public – why so many BB7 (and older) devices?

But the real question is – is it enough to convert BB7 (and older) users to BB10?  Will that be enough to pull Blackberry out of its slump?  Will users that have eschewed iOS and Android for Windows Phone, instead jump ship again to BB10?

Realistically, the long-term prospects for the company are still questionable.  And unfortunately, it does appear to be a result of the amount of time that it took for RIM to finally get its act together.  While I have no doubt that BB10 can trounce Windows Phone in the smartphone marketplace, the real truth is that Microsoft is quite happy to lose money on Windows Phone if necessary in order to push its presence in that space – with the intention of promoting its vertically-integrated solutions.  Blackberry, meanwhile, has no worthwhile consumer business outside of Blackberry mobile phones – in that respect it’s truly make-or-break on BB10.  Meanwhile, their enterprise business is not the behemoth it once was:

  • It has come under intense competitive pressure due to the BYOD movement
  • It has been scrutinized due to recent service outages
  • It doesn’t have the same brand loyalty that exists in the consumer market

Consider the news of changes to service fees, and it becomes more obvious that Blackberry’s traditional revenue streams are drying up as a result of the industry shifting more towards generic, data-centric service plans.  I imagine they’ll even have an increasingly-tough time hocking their BES software, despite the ability to manage iPhone and Android devices, as any potential customer must realize the obvious conflict of interest: that Blackberry would rather you use their software to manage their devices while they also collect on BES service plans.  Why go with Blackberry’s enterprise software if alternatives exist from vendors with no vested interest in the end-user devices they purport to manage?  Who wants to hitch their wagon to the horse that left them behind the pack for such a long time?

Okay, so why is Blackberry a “buy”?  And why do I agree with Goldman Sachs?

Because the company still has value.  And having brought their consumer side out of the doldrums, they have arguably more value than they did 12 months ago.  They’ll probably see mildy-impressive sales of BB10 devices after launch.  They will inevitably report strong earnings for a quarter or two, perhaps longer.  They’ll beat expectations.  And around the same time they’ll plateau as they struggle to gain more market share.  They may divest Enterprise.  There may be more layoffs.  And their rating will change to “sell”, and investors will make their quick buck.  What of Blackberry after that?  Who Knows(tm).

Which brings us to the second part of this article’s title.  Blackberry will be a strong 3rd, but they’ll either maintain that position as a smaller, more streamlined version of their current selves or – more likely – they will attain that position and then find themselves in the same boat as Palm in the not-too-distant future.  There simply isn’t enough market share to support their continued existence as the RIM we’ve always known.  Even if Apple releases a new iPhone with the same stale iOS, it will only take them one product cycle to rectify that problem.  Microsoft will not go away and will not concede significant market share.  Android will not cede market share, particularly as Google continues to push its software and hardware agenda.

I simply don’t see the version of reality playing out that has Blackberry being a content, distant third in the smartphone space, gaining no significant market share while giving investors a continuing return on their investment.  And that’s a shame, because I truly believe that Blackberry is an innovative company with a compelling legacy and the technical know-how to create good devices.

Ultimately, we’ll see if I’m wrong.  Considering that I’m no expert in this field, I can naively hope that I will be wrong.

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October 15, 2012

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Does Google really have tablet woes?

There seems to be much discussion concerning Google and its apparent failure in the tablet market.  If I understand, the suggestion is that Google has failed to execute correctly; it simply hasn’t put enough effort into pushing the idea of an Android tablet so much as it has pushed the idea of Android mobile devices. The Nexus 7 is widely regarded as Google’s first (and only) success in the tablet space, despite being preceded by a number of retail devices and one major OS revision.

And it would seem that time isn’t on Google’s side either, what with the impending release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 RT tablets.  Microsoft has been courting the tablet space for a number of years now, and their inability to make deep inroads was as much due to Windows itself as it was to a lackluster consumer demand.

But with Apple proving that tablets are now in demand, and Microsoft having an established user base on the desktop that seems primed to jump into mobile, is Google destined to be a distant third in the tablet space?  Have they gotten it wrong while Apple has run with the crown and Microsoft has finally gotten it right

I think there’s more at play here.  I’ve talked about it here, and others have talked about it too – that is, the question of whether people really need a tablet.  Tablets have – and still do – sit somewhere between the uber-personal smartphone and the uber-productive laptop/desktop.  They’re an interesting media consumption device, and Apple successfully capitalized on its existing media ecosystem by introducing another client that was less personal, less presumptuous and more convenient than the existing alternatives.

And yet we’re seeing a shift in the tablet space.  Like it or not, tablets are approaching the smartphone in size and – crucially – in importance.  They’re becoming more personal.  The shift from 10″ to 7″ has obvious implications re: productivity, and the combination of lower price and smaller screen suddenly makes the device more personal again – probably because it’s more mobile.  Microsoft will likely find success with Windows 8 RT, but it won’t be iPad-level success.  Rather, they’ll have nothing more than a viable slate alternative to a Windows desktop/laptop at best, and a larger version of a Windows Phone 8 smartphone at worst – complete with the market traction that they’ve enjoyed for the past year with Windows Phone 7.

Personally, I think that the relative success of the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7 are harbingers of the future of consumer tablets.  Curated experiences.  Portals to the ecosystem.  Unquestionable media-consumption devices that can run mobile apps on a larger, more comfortable screen than a smartphone.  And presently, the only real contenders in this space seem to be – yes, Kindle Fire and Nexus 7.  But there’s more to the story.  Google is probably better positioned than any other company at present to lead the next tablet wave.  Why?  Simply, Amazon has no interest in tablets for tablet’s sake.  Google, with the unvieiling of the Play brand, has a competitor to Amazon and they have an app store to compete with Apple.  And… they have a slew of online resources that cater to social and productivity – the latter of which has been Microsoft’s strong suit.

They’re the only company that has a 7″ tablet, a mature media store, a mature app store, and mature cloud-based social and productivity offerings.  If they were to use the 7″ tablet as a curated experience, they could immediately offer the end-user a solution to every usage case there is for a mobile device that’s not a smartphone and doesn’t have a hardware keyboard.

Stop treating Drive/Docs, Gmail, Google+ etc. as mere apps.  They need to be integrated.  Google needs to own the experience.  Sure, a user can still run the Kindle app, but there would be an obvious and clear distinction between an “app” and the ecosystem.  Stop treating the tablet as an app launcher and start treating it as an extension of your brand.

This is something that Google could do without alienating the notion of “openness”.  Again, they’re well-positioned – they have the hardware “Nexus” brand.  Rather than have a Nexus phone and a larger Nexus phone as they do now (ie, the Google Nexus and the Nexus 7), have a Nexus phone with stock Android and a Nexus tablet with “Google Experience” – the curated experience.  And if they want to continue to pursue the 10″ space (which they should), then get serious about tablet apps.  Distinguish them in the Play store, and work with developers to take advantage of the recent app guidelines.

Google still has time to figure this out.  Word is that an iPad Mini will be released soon, but unless Apple changes the staid iOS experience then we’re really only talking about the same old iPad in a smaller form factor.  It will challenge the Kindle Fire and existing Nexus 7 simply because it’s an Apple product.  If Google were to redefine (or evolve) the 7″ tablet space then they could compete with an iPad Mini on the same basis – it would become a bonafied Google product, not just an Android tablet.

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July 31, 2012

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Is that a superphone by your face, or just happy to see me?

I have a troubled history when it comes to any combination involving PDA/smartphone and Shelly.

First it started with a Compaq iPAQ that was left behind in a cab at the St. Thomas port-of-call of a Caribbean cruise.  That particular PDA was a Christmas present from Shelly, and suffice it to say that I was incredibly upset for the remainder of the trip.  Not that I had lost data (I hadn’t, really) – but that I had lost something that Shelly had given to me.  It felt like a betrayal of trust.

Fortunately, the iPAQ made its way back to me.  That’s a feel-good story by itself, but ultimately the PDA was a “marked man” – it unceremoniously slipped from my grasp while I was opening my car trunk.  Yes, the screen cracked, with the digitizer beyond repair.

Next in the story line – the Desire Z.  Shelly didn’t buy this smartphone outright, but she did lend a financial assist.  And yes, it too suffered an ignominious fate – dropped, again, in close proximity to my car.  Dropped, again, while my hands were entirely overburdened.

And while I did manage to stick a foot out and deflect the phone before it landed at a perpendicular angle, the resultant slide left a fair number of gouges and scratches in the body.  With the phone face down I hoped for the best – I picked it up, and observed a crack at the top-right.  The digitizer was saved, and the crack didn’t obstruct anything too badly.  But there it was – two high-tech devices, two assists from Shelly, two undeserving ends.

I suppose it’s good that the Desire Z is still functional – blemished though it may be.   But I can’t understand how the Palm Pilot (that preceded the Compaq iPAQ) and the HP iPAQ (that followed the Compaq iPAQ) as well as the HTC TyTN (that followed the HP iPAQ) all managed to survive without incident.

At some point I believe that Shelly decided she was done buying me high-tech devices.  That particular decision came before the Desire Z, and apparently she relented to my obvious technology bias as she subsequently offered to subsidize the Desire Z’s full face value.  But I refused; I agreed with the spirit of her initial resolve, in part because it was based on the realization that consumer technology is a fickle beast, where relentless technological advancements cause devices to be put to pasture well in advance of their time.  I did not want her to continue to invest in such a selfish ideal.

That may have been fortuitous on my part, because I believe that around the time I dropped the Desire Z I was also starting to look around heavily for the Next Thing(tm).  Not necessarily the next phone, but rather a refreshed user experience.  Back in the WinMo/TyTN world the next thing was the move from stock-WM5 to WM5-with-customizations; fTouchSL and a different launcher, if memory serves.  While I was content initially to run the HTC Sense version of Android 2.2 on the Z, I came to realize that I was two major versions behind the current trend.  I felt nothing compelling me to upgrade to 2.3, but 3.0 had come and gone, and 4.0 was the talk of the day.  Fortunately many applications still listed 2.2 as the minimum required Android version, but when Google itself is pushing a 4.0 release you can bet that they’re also pushing the envelope when it comes to the 1st-party apps.  The likes of Gmail, Maps, etc all worked fine on 2.2, but the experience was designed to be something else entirely with 4.0 afoot – both in appearance and functionality.

Additionally, the bru-ha-ha over the HTC One X flagship’s sub-par multitasking performance caused me to sour on the sub-par multitasking performance that my own Z had always exhibited.  It was becoming noticeable, and it was noticeably negative – a harbinger of change, that is.

So I had been researching Cyanogen-based ROMs for the Z prior to the fateful drop, and the day after the drop I proceeded to load a CM9 derivative.  Never looked back, despite some noticeable lag.

It was just too much of a sweet upgrade going from Froyo (2.2) to Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x)  I was definitely feeling Google’s design philosophy, and even after playing with the latest HTC and Samsung flagship phones in the store I still felt that “stock” ICS was the way to go.  At one point in time I felt that Sense was where it was at, but the advances that Google put forth in ICS quickly erased that (unhealthy) dependency.

So there it was that I was digging ICS on the Z.  Well, I was digging ICS anyway.  Either it was the beta state of the ROM or the limitations of the Z’s hardware, but the lag was killing me.  And for whatever reason, the screen was starting to feel cramped…?!?  So I started looking at a hardware upgrade to go along with that software.

Understand that – thankfully – no impulse decisions were made.  I had a carrier hardware upgrade waiting in the wings for about 2 years so I figured I might as well put it to good use and get the latest and greatest for a really good price.  Except that each of the latest and greatest somehow had undesirable qualities of their own.

The HTC One X was a looker, no doubt, but having done my fair share of battery pulls – and even having replaced my battery for one with more capacity – I couldn’t stomach the non-replaceable battery.  Lack of expandable memory was also a minus, though one I could stomach but would rather not (in the name of disaster recovery).  On the software side I discovered that Sense 4.0 wasn’t that bad, really, but there was that awful multitasking.  Would it get sorted?

The Samsung Galaxy S III surely would continue the GSII’s reign on top of the Android heap, but TouchWiz almost made me throw up.  I mean… I was speechless.  Ya, the phone itself had replaceable everything and a nice camera and screen (the latter not as good as the One X though) but the s/w was a no-go.

That left the Galaxy Nexus – which had the benefit of being a Google-supported device.  Except that the Rogers version was behind the times by three minor Android versions (4.0.1 vs. 4.0.4) and there was talk of signal drop issues in 4.0.4???

Ultimately, my time with the CM9-derived Andromadus Audacity ROM lead me to decide that, regardless of the hardware, I would likely be running a CM ROM in the future.  It had the best of both worlds – a stock Android feel, subtle but welcome improvements, and relentless developer support across many devices.  And once I came to that realization, the upgrade decision came down to hardware alone.

But first I sat on the decision for a while.  Because… Jelly Bean (4.1) came out.  And while Google provided an official version for the Nexus, I was still of the mind that CM10 would be the ROM for me.  But CM10 didn’t exist yet.

That gave me time to decide if I would wait for a fall Nexus device or go with the current Nexus.  Thing is, the current Nexus wasn’t the best hardware that was currently available.  It was eclipsed by the One X and the GS3.  The One X wasn’t a contender, which left the GS3.  So really it came down to: GS3 or fall Nexus?

In the smartphone world, it’s always the case that there will be something newer and better within months.  Does that mean that you should wait perpetually?  A consequence of wedding oneself to a CyanogenMod ROM is that there’s a delay between Google’s official unveiling of a major Android release and the subsequent CM release.  This is a hardware-independent fact.  At which point, the focus shifts from getting the best hardware to getting the best CM release.

And it just so happened that CM10 preview builds got to the point that: 1) they were stable, and (2) they showed an obvious commitment on the part of the Cyanogen team to support the hardware. Tipping point was reached – I sprung for a Samsung Galaxy S III.

So yes, I went from a 3.7″ QWERTY slider with a trackpad to a 4.8″ slate with a single physical button.  And that last point is noteworthy, because I absolutely adored the trackpad-wake feature of the Z, which made it a cinch to turn on the screen when the phone is docked in its vehicle mount.  In fact, this is one of the features that made the GS3 win out over the Nexus (in addition to the faster hardware, bigger battery, better camera and 2x the RAM).  Might a quad-core Nexus come out in the fall?  Sure.  Is the GS3 mighty fast with its dual-core?  Yes.  Does Project Butter make insane core count a non-issue to anybody but the hardcore gamer?  YES.

So ya, I’m rocking a “Pebble Blue” SGSIII.  What do I have to say about my previous tirades (sic) re: device longevity?  Admittedly, dropping my Z didn’t help.  And buying into 2.2 may have been the wrong decision too, as I believe it was already a 6-month old OS at the time.  But you know, I have no doubt that a 4.1 version of Andromadus will be available for the Z (there’s a working CM10-build out right now) however…

…as I said earlier, the screen was starting to feel cramped.  And, believe it or not, I used the hardware keyboard no more than 10 times in the 1.5 years of actively using the phone.  That meant that I was carrying around the size and weight of the keyboard (and its perpetual on-the-verge-of-opening state) for no good reason.  I realized early on that my primary reason for having a hardware keyboard – that is, text entry in remote desktop sessions – was a non-starter.  Pinch-to-zoom and finger-panning make a virtual keyboard work very well during remote desktop sessions.

Which means that, like the Touch Pro before it (and the TyTN before that), it was a hardware design decision – and an iconic one at that (vs. something like processor speed, which isn’t distinctive) – that forced the desire to move on.

I’ve attempted to future-proof this purchase (in as much as one can when talking about smartphones) by electing for the GS3’s 2GB of RAM (vs. industry-standard 1GB), large screen and relative newness (what, 1 month old?).  A HUP was critical, as I absolutely would not fork over full price for the “latest” model in fear of feeling that I’m just following a trend with hard-earned bucks.  But a subsidized phone?  Ya, I’ll do that every 5 years or so 🙂

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April 19, 2012

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Digital Lifestyle

Move over Latitude (client), enter Latify

I had a recent issue involving Latitude and my home automation “somebody-is-coming-home” logic.  What hurt the most is that, around the same time, I had made some significant changes to my Latitude polling code which would increase the polling frequency if it was determined that a Latitude user was in “rapid motion”.  I’ll refrain from posting details re: the exact definition of that term, but suffice it to say that the intent was to collect more information when a user is moving around so that we could determine their enroute in a more expedient manner.

So while I got that code working, I was subsequently stymied by an apparent inability to receive updates from the Latitude API at anything faster than 1 update per 10 minutes.  Given that my code needs at least 3 data points before it can make an “enroute” determination, the apparent limitation meant that the code wouldn’t know you were enroute until at least 30 minutes had passed in your current transit session.

Bummer.

So as evidenced in the link above, I took to the Latitude Google Group and after some time it was decided that the issue wasn’t with my code or the Latitude API, but rather the Latitude client on my phone.  Apparently some client update along the way had changed the upload behaviour, such the client was now batching updates.  In other words, the phone would hold on to a set of updates and upload them in one shot.  Which is great for battery saving, but not so great for real-time location reporting.

I heard about this Latify character amid other general rumblings about Latitude being battery hog.  I never did pay much attention to the third-party contender as I hadn’t noticed any particularly heinous battery drain myself with the official client.  But given this most recent development, I had no choice but to look elsewhere.

I’m either hugely  glad that I did or vaguely glad that I did.

In concert with Tasker, the premium version of Latify has been put to use on my handset to switch between rapid GPS-based updates (when driving) to less frequent cell/wifi-based updates otherwise.  I’ve created a Tasker profile that attempts to determine when the phone is moving (by determing if the connected cell tower has changed) and will switch Latify from a 1hr update period to a 5min update period if motion is occurring.

In general it seems to work well, and on some days I notice incredible battery prosperity.  If this is indeed due to Latify and my usage patterns, then I am indeed hugely glad for the Latify/Tasker combination.  If battery usage is not part of the equation, then I’m vaguely glad – yes, I’ve got more control over my Latitude updates and I seem able to track my movements at 5-min intervals if, say, the wifey is driving me around; but I’m also curiously dismayed by some of Tasker’s quirks and the hack-ish way I’m having to deduce cell-tower based movement.

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January 20, 2012

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Digital Lifestyle, Software Development, Uncategorized

Making tech work for me (smartphone automation with Tasker)

I’ve made a few mentions of my fondness for MortScript during my time in the Windows Mobile world.  It was most useful when it came time to automate in-car tasks – resolve Bluetooth connectivity drops, dis/connect A2DP, keep the screen alive.  Other things were more general in nature, like emulating a Bluetooth “timed discoverable” feature and restoring the Normal ring profile after Silent had been active for a period of time.

All useful additions, features or fixes.  And I’m sure that I’ve given a shout-out to Tasker as my go-to-guy for giving me the same sort of hacking pleasure on Android.

Fortunately, my Tasker experience to-date has been more about adding functionality than fixing O/S problems.  And I’ve extended the functions I mentioned in this post to the point that I’m tickled pink (not literally, of course) over the added convenience that has been bestowed on my Android phone.

The aforementioned post has a section aptly named “Tasker” that basically talked about things which happen automagically when the phone is in the car.  Basically, when the car’s Bluetooth is detected, the phone can be in one of two states which we’ll call “Car In” and “Car Docked”.  It’s the latter which is of most interest, and it becomes active – as mentioned in that previous post – when external power is connected.

(it would be possible to sense the presence of an actual “car mode” cradle, but the Desire Z doesn’t have the requisite hardware.  I find it acceptable to consider the phone in a “car docked” mode if the car’s bluetooth is detected and the phone is plugged in – which pretty much means that the phone is sitting in a cradle)

Gone are the days of auto-launching Google Navigation – more on that later.  I definitely wanted a 3-foot user interface to come up when the phone entered Car Docked mode, but Google chose to deny access to the actual Car Home app on my phone.  So, I relied on Vlingo‘s “InCar” feature to emulate the Car Home app.  And this was… acceptable.  Vlingo’s usefulness as a Siri-like assistant was questionable, but I was digging the convenience of the InCar interface so I told Tasker to fire up this interface when Car Docked mode became active.  From there, I could launch Navigation or Maps or – if Vlingo was cooperative and background noise was low enough – speak a command to open any app of my choosing.

Vlingo’s usefulness fell significantly once it stopped being able to hear anything I tried to yell at it.  I think this happened shortly after I rooted the phone, but no matter; it was the kick in the pants that I needed to convince me that it was time to rid myself of this dysfunctional relationship with Vlingo.  Away it went.

It was subsequently replaced with a pure-Tasker solution, in which I could hold down the search key and up would pop a custom menu containing all of my useful in-car shortcuts.  So there was a link to Navigation, Opera Mobile, XiiaLive for streaming audio, and some other useful apps.  And this was… acceptable… but it was just wasn’t integrated enough.  What I really wanted was to hit the home key and have a real 3-ft interface appear.  What I really wanted was Google’s Car Home app.

My decision to root the phone was actually the ticket I needed to get Car Home installed, as it involves booting into recovery and installing a signed package file containing Car Home.  Anyhow, that was done, and so we arrive at the point where I am today – getting in the car and putting the phone in its cradle and connecting power automagically brings up the 3-ft interface of the Car Home app.

It may seem to you like I’ve spent a lot of time to get something going that’s trivial.  And on the face of it I’d agree with that perception.  But you have to keep in mind the how and why of it all.

The “how”, in this case, is Tasker.  And the “why”, in this case, is Tasker’s flexibility and power.  Car Home has the ability to launch itself whenever it detects a certain Bluetooth device – ie, the car – and that’s great.  But I want more to happen when my phone is “docked” in the car.  And this is why Tasker is important, and why I’d rather have Tasker launch Car Home at the appropriate time.  In actual fact, Tasker sets the phone’s “Car Mode” setting to true, which is a global setting which may have other (desired) ramifications.

Now… recall that I mentioned Tasker’s previous duty of starting Google Navigation whenever the Car Docked state became active.  I could tell you that it’s nice to have Navigation up when you’re driving, and to some extent that’s true, but my car has navigation built-in – and that screen is 2x the size of my phone’s screen.  I could tell you that Google Navigation shows semi-reliable traffic information, and that’s true too, but I don’t need that info for the entire drive.  Plus, I can always get there with two taps: one tap on the Home button to bring up the Car Home launcher, one tap on the Navigation icon to bring up navigation.

So why did I ever have Tasker launch Navigation as soon as the phone was docked in the car?

One word: Latitude.  Click the link.  Honestly, do it.  Then you’ll know why Latitude is important for me.  With Navigation active, GPS is also active, and when GPS is active the phone is aware of movement with more precision than it is when using WiFi and/or cell towers.

So Navigation was a useful means to a GPS-enabled end.  And while I still find Navigation useful, it’s really the Latitude updates that I wanted to occur while the phone is docked in the car.

Most obvious solution: tell Tasker to turn on GPS, and Bob’s your uncle.  Well, not so fast – even if Tasker can just turn on the GPS module and leave it turned on (which I doubt), you get into trouble with the opposite action: turning GPS off.  Suppose somebody is trying to use GPS when Tasker turns it off?

So my solution is somewhat more creative.  And this goes back to the “how” and “why” of using Tasker at all when Car Home seems suited to fulfilling your 3ft-interface needs.

Something else that I’ve had Tasker do is adjust my phone’s brightness dynamically.  And yes, the phone has an auto-brightness setting, but believe me when I say that the lowest brightness setting is still way too bright when you’re driving in darkness.  When the phone is docked, Tasker runs a task that loops and constantly measures the light-sensor’s reported ambient light level.  Then, in conjunction with the Screen Filter plugin, it is able to dim the screen to levels that would be un-achievable otherwise.  It can even take sunset/sunrise times into account, as those tend to be the trickiest times of day when it comes to suitable lighting.  This logic recently underwent a rewrite, and it’s not as straightforward as following the sensor’s (somewhat finicky and fluctuating) reported level.

Anyhow, this task is great because it’s an active loop that I can use to call other tasks.  And the lastest task is… one which attempts to get a GPS fix.  So every 60 seconds or so, Tasker asks the Android system for the most accurate location info possible.  Android dutifully obliges by determing which location services are permitted – GPS and/or “net” – and uses the most accurate one to get the requested information.  The beauty here is that it’s now Android which is determining what needs to be done to get the location data.  If Navigation is active and using GPS, then the location data is known and returned to Tasker.  Okay, Tasker doesn’t actually do anything with that information.  BUT… if GPS is not active, then Android will turn on GPS, get a fix, return the location data to Tasker, then turn off GPS if nobody else is using it.  Which completely solves Tasker’s  problem of determining when/if GPS should be active.

This is good news, because Latitude seems to be hooked into a system event notification that goes something like this: “if the phone determines that its location has changed, let me know.”  Well, because Tasker is asking for updated location info every minute, and its asking for the most accurate location info available, it’s necessarily the case that Latitude will get notified every minute if the phone has moved.  Meaning…

…all of my Latitude-dependent services will have precise, up-to-date location info.

I know what you’re thinking – what happens if I’m moving around and I’m not driving?  This is entirely possible.  And the short-answer is – nothing.  We’ll get the same old imprecise Latitude info and it may not be terribly relevant either.  BUT… and this is important… everything I’ve done re: Tasker and the “Car Docked” mode means that the special use case of having the phone docked in the car will result in precise, relevant Latitude info.  Period.  Even if I only drive one day a week, it’s now the case that the driving scenario is handled in a seamless, extensible, straightforward manner.  It requires no special user intervention that wouldn’t occur otherwise.  It doesn’t even require that Navigation is active.

And that’s the design philosophy that I aim for.  Look at a problem, find an elegant and workable solution.  Refine the solution.  And hopefully, extend the solution to resolve related problems.  If you can extend the solution, then you know you’ve come up with a solid foundation or approach.

That’s why I’m tickled pink.  I love to solve worthwhile problems 🙂

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October 19, 2011

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Home Automation, Software Development

Me <3 Opera Mobile

So I’ve been doing some work off-and-on on a mobile version of the site I use to browse/play music on my home network. I’ve wanted a mobile-optimized version of the site for some time, and a recent development with my SHOUTcast streaming client of choice has made this project more of a necessity than a curiosity.

Critical to the operation of the site is the ability to touch-scroll various regions in the page. That, and the ability of the browser to support HTML5 Audio in the MP3 format. And so far, I’ve only found Opera Mobile to be worthy of solving the HTML5 Audio part of the equation while also remaining my mobile browser of choice.

However, I was having no luck with the touch-scrolling part of the equation. Many mobile browsers seem to have a problem handling straight-up overflow:scroll, and even the iScroll Javascript library wasn’t solving my particular flavour of problem. And what was working was working at a horrible pace.

Then I happened to notice that a manual update for Opera Mobile was sitting in my Android Market queue. Among reported changes was an update to the core (or engine) that the Android version of the browser was using. And wouldn’t you know it – upgrading to this version solved all of my touch-scroll issues, and performance is about as snappy as it is on the desktop Opera Mobile emulator.

So colour me happy. Now that the site is functional, I can work on prettying it up and adding gee-whiz features 🙂

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April 1, 2011

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Digital Lifestyle

Frustrations with Gmail

Not every relationship is all rosy…

(man, I never thought I’d say this, but the on-screen keyboard is actually faster and easier to use than the hardware keyboard!!!)

Anyhow… when I switched to Android I switched my email notifications from SMS to Gmail. A little background:

I run my own personal email server, and while it supports IMAP Push, I’ve never found a client implementation of that protocol that had acceptable battery usage. Regardless, while it’s nice to get your emails immediately and be able to perform some action on them immediately, I’ve always wanted to maintain strict control over which emails generate a “new mail” alert.

There are a number of ways around that triage problem. But then you get into complexities over how you want your mail organized vs. what you want to be notified about… Long story short, I opted to create an out-of-band notification system specifically for the emails I was interested in. This has the added bonus of being extensible, so that I can define times of day that notifications are active, complex state tables that affect notification eligibility, and things like remote awareness.

Anyhow, these out-of-band notifications were traditionally delivered via SMS, and in the WinMo world I had coded a solution whereby a second, specially-formatted SMS would tell Pocket Outlook to sync email. The result was a poor-man’s push solution – perfectly functional, if not the most efficient.

So that’s the background. Since I place great value on the flexibility of this notification system, it was paramount that I could carry over its core intent to my Android smartphone. And I opted to ditch SMS and go with Gmail as the delivery mechanism.

So that’s the background then.

What I’ve been finding, much to my dismay, is that I’ve been missing notifications. In the SMS world it was possible that a notification would get delayed, or lost altogether – but I didn’t expect that from Gmail’s push notification system running on Android 2.2.

After some digging I came to realize that quite a few of these missed notifications were indeed making it to my phone, but they were ending up in the trash and hence no alert was being generated by the Gmail app.

Gosh darnit! Chock it up to Gmail’s “conversatons”, where your emails are grouped (ie., “threaded”) by subject. So if you decide to delete a single message in a conversation (which is something you can’t do in the mobile app – more on that in a minute) then the whole conversation would have a “trash” label applied to it.

And it seems that when a conversation has the trash label applied, the mobile Gmail app removes it from the inbox view. Critically, it won’t alert because the new message is part of a “deleted” conversation.

Now, I haven’t tested this, but it’s possible that things would work differently if you delete a single message in the Gmail web app. But on the Android app no such option exists – it’s the conversation or nothing at all.

Now I have to imagine that this is of the utmost frustration to people who use Gmail (and the Gmail mobile app) as their primary mail client. Fortunately I’m not one of those people, so I’m testing a solution (and it may be that this can apply to the aforementioned group of people too – unless they’ve figured it out already).

Basically, you don’t delete anything.

This is something that Gmail originally trumpeted – that you now had so much space that you’d never to delete an email again. And because you need some way to manage a huge inbox with email that’s never deleted, and people generally pout if they can’t permanentky delete their own email, Google acquiesced and added some trash “label” and other what-not to appease the masses.

But in my case those solutions don’t work. I can get by without deleting because I only care about new emails – or more accurately, new notifications of new emails.

So my solution is not to delete, but also, to only sync 1 day worth of email out of my inbox. That way, the old undeleted stuff will fall out of view in the mobile Gmail app. I’m also syncing “all” starred items, so if something is of interest and I need it to stick around for a few days – like a URL that I’ve emailed myself – then I can star it and it will remain in view.

That’s the theory. I’ve only just now made all the changes, so you’ll need to follow tradition and give me a few days to deal with the (inevitable?) fallout.