Screen shots of Android Hero

My friend wanted to see some screen shots of my Android phone so I thought I would post a few up for him with a shot of a couple of my favourite applications too.

However, taking a screen shot of an Android phone is not as straightforward as it is on other mobile operating platforms.

There is an Android market application called “Screenshot” but it nows costs money. I am not happy to pay for a feature I *expect* straight out of the box. So I ferreted around the web and found a few articles, cobbled them together and got it working.

The only downside is that you need to have your Android phone connected to your computer to do this, but I live in hope that some Android developer will release a free application soon.

First you need to install the Android SDK. Then you must install a compatible IDE. I chose Eclipse. Finally, you must configure the Android IDE plug in.

In the “tools” folder of the Android SDK folder, there is an application called “DDMS” - Dalvik Debug Monitor.

(Please note you will need the USB Debugging set to *ON* as shown below)

Once the DDMS is running you need to press CTRL + ‘S’. Et voila!! Instant screen shot!

Now to tour around my Android and show you some of my favourite applications.

This is the first screen you’ll come to on my phone. The *Lock* screen. To access the *PIN* lock you need to drag the grey bar down.

Now you enter your *PIN* which consists of more than 3 consecutive dots joined together.

When successfully unlocked, you are presented with the "Home" screen. As you can see, I have installed the "Palm Pre" theme and dropped the HTC Sense/TouchFlo skin in favour of the "Open Home" theme manager and the "Open Gesture Pro" application which allows you to attribute a free flow gesture to an action or application.

Any notifications are displayed in the top bar. When you drag the top bar down, you are presented with the screen below, which gives you more detailed information on the notifications.

If you press the "Home" key on the device, you are presented with a selection screen of the home theme you wish to use. As you can see I have 4 installed if you include the base "Home".

Here are a couple of screen shots of the application list.

The address book organises all calls, text messages, emails, facebook and flickr information per person.

The "Open Gesture Pro" application allows you to draw a freehand shape and the attributed application will launch. This allows me to do away with the icons from the desktop. Hopefully, there will be a way I can configure the number of virtual desktops I have to 1 and save memory and possibly battery power.

The "Open Gesture Pro" application also has a settings "launcher" and basic statistics when you stroke "up" and "down" respectively on the screen.

Google Maps has the brilliant Google Latitude built in.

One fantastic application is "Locale". It allows you to configure actions to process upon specified conditions. For example, I can set my phone to switch off WiFi and Bluetooth once my battery drops below 30%. I can also set my phone to process actions based on geographical location. So I could set my ringer to silent when I am in the office just by walking into the office!

"TuneWiki" streams the lyrics to the playing tune. This turns your music player into a mini karaoke.

"Netmeter" is details various data about your phone such as data traffic volumes, CPU load, and CPU load by application.

The last application I will recommend is "TasKiller". It is a task manager for Android that allows you power to kill processes in memory.

And that's my quick and dirty tour of Android!

Open Gestures for Android

I've been waiting a while for the Open Gesture to come to Android.

I have the HTC Hero and it REALLY does miss a gesture service. And now it is released!!!

Hooray!!

Well not quite.....

After installing it hung my phone up.

So I rebooted.

And then I found the cause of the problem.

The HTC Hero runs the - quite smart- HTC TouchFlo theme.

But this conflicts with Open Gestures - which is not as pretty but far more functional.

I am at a crossroads now.

Which one should I default to? I can already see my day being eaten up...

I think Open Gestures will win - as it will make the interface SO smooth....

Style over substance...?

We shall see....

UPDATE:

Don't install Open Gesture if you have an HTC Hero. Well, that is what my experience tells me. It totally mashed up my phone. I am still waiting for feedback from Hollowire - the makers of Open Gesture - about any compatibility issues and workarounds for this.

Luckily, Android Market allows something the App Store doesn't - an "Uninstall and Refund" policy.

So I exercised that and had to wipe my phone as I kept getting error messages after uninstalling Open Gesture.

To wipe your phone back to factory condition you need to:

1. Power down the phone

2. Hold down the "Home" key

3. Still holding the "Home" key - press and hold the power button until you get an image of an exclamation mark and the Hero

4. Let go of the buttons

5. Press "Home" and "Power" once

6. You'll be presented with the menu!

Hope it helps someone...!

I got my HTC Hero!

I have decided to dump the iPhone and move into the world of Android.

Apple have really started to annoy me lately with their tyranny over the AppStore. I didn't like the way users were dictated to about what they could and couldn't have on their own phone. On top of that, I really despised the fact that people are held to ransom on the contract because of the exclusivity deal O2 have with the iPhone.

I also dislike the inability to run background processes. One of my favourites after IM is Google Latitude. I love the idea that it can send my location to the web without me having to do anything. But because you can not run a background process on an iPhone - unless you jailbreak it and even then you need an application that will monitor and send your position at fixed intervals - you have to do it manually. There is a workaround involving some scripting and a MobileMe account which undoubtedly will be exploited by Apple as a solution to handling realtime location aware software.

However, the exclusivity deal will be over next year and will drag TMobile, Vodafone and Orange into the iPhone market, which will no doubt prompt O2 to become all sympathetic with their customers again. Well, too late - I'm already sniffing around other providers for better deals....

Anyway, back to my Hero. I decided to move to the Hero rather than the G1 or Magic as I liked the look and feel of the Hero.

I truly believe within the next 2 years, Android will dominate the mobile market. I believed the Hero was going to be the first phone to announce Android as a serious player.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. But that's not to say it is a bad phone.

The hardware is a little underpowered for the operating system. You can feel the "clunk" as you swipe between screens. You really notice how "swish" the iPhone is in comparison.

The operating system - in concept - is awesome.

I like all the little tweaks to make life easy like the multiple screens which allows you to configure different "home" screens.

I personally, have a landing screen, with my clock, email, calendar etc. I have a social screen with BrightKite, Facebook, Latitude, Places directory from Google. I have an applications screen with shortcuts to all my favourite applications and I have another screen with an email widget. There are still more screen to customise.

A "must have" application is "locale". It allows you to set up the phone based on a series of conditions. For example, I have mine set up to recognise my geographical location and set the ringer to medium, vibrate off and attach to WiFi when I am home. I also set it to switch the ringer to silent and vibrate on when I am in the office. I have also set the the phone to switch off WifI and Bluetooth when the battery is below 30%. A very useful application. One application I am surprised has been invested in properly is a "Gestures" application which allows you to swipe the screen in a certain shape to launch applications or events like switch on wifi by swipe up and down quickly or switch to Silent mode by gesturing left, right, up. Saves on shortcuts and menu clicking.

I was excited to use a NEW "AppStore". The "Android Market". But like Apples AppStore and Sauriks Cydia, Androids Market suffers the same problems. It is not well categorised.

The biggest problem with these stores is that people like Apple, and Google should certify applications as being approved and leave more undesirable applications uncertified. But always leave it to the user to decide what to install and what not to install. They could even insist that a user waives rights to warranty when they install an uncertified application.

The Android Market is a complete mess. A long list of applications, written by many different people and companies - but no indication as to what is genuine and what may be considered malware by way of insecure data handling or general instability.

This is where the AppStore wins over Androids Market. But overall, Androids Market wins because it allows ALL applications on. Tethering, GPS, Google Voice ;) It's left up to the individual to choose what they want to install.

One of the main problems with Android coming to market was the fact it was so "open". Mobile operators would be scared of an open architecture allowing for easy hacking, insecure applications and applications that circumvent premium services like VoIP.

But being a highly customisable OS also has a positive side. It allows operators and manufacturers to customise the OS to very high levels that make them distinctly different to other phones that use the same OS.

The Hero has this in the form of the HTC widgets, which are cool, but nothing mind blowing. I know a lot has been written about the HTC skin for Android, but personally, I don't see the "w00t" in any of it.

The Android OS is a couple iterations away from being a serious threat. The quickest way to make Android a serious contender is to port a few of the iPhone applications like:

• LinkedIn
• WorldMate
• Skype
• Facebook
• Bloom
• National Rail

And then create some form of "Google Approved", "Android Approved" or "Operator Approved" badges to bring some form of quality control to the Android Market.

For now I'm sticking with my Hero handset. Even if the hardware isn't up to scratch. I may even try out the Samsung Galaxy when it comes out.

Either way, I'm liking the Android OS - even if it is a little immature. But, I'm a geek. And I like the high customisation factor. It is not a main stream consumer phone just yet but give it a couple of years then maybe.

It is a "geek tool" for now :)

Palm Pre is arriving....

...just before Christmas....?

Looks to me like Palm have no desire to make waves in the mobile phone wars. Any company that wanted to make money - SURELY would have made more of an effort in Europe.

Europe is one of the biggest markets for mobile device sales - so you'd have thought Palm would have wanted to capitalise on that......

Orange to offer LG GD910 watch phone! Who cares!?

Is it just me or do mobile phone providers think we're stupid?

As time goes on, the mobile phones may have gotten smaller, but the battery life has lessened and the amount of useless or unnecessary features has increased - all owing to the loss in battery performance.

It still amazes me that phone manufacturers do not allow you to run the phone in black & white mode to save on battery power.

I personally use an iPhone. Which really is an overrated piece of shit. But it's my piece of shit and doubles as my iPod, so I get to carry the one device that functions as two devices I would normally carry around with me. I'm happy with that deal. But then they brought out the iPhone 3GS, which boast x, y and z but so far has only provided problems as all new products do.

The most annoying thing about the arrival of the iPhone 3GS was the price. £500 for a PAYG/SIM free model. 24 month contract with a price tag of £200?!?? I don't think so. But we allow it. Which is why they do it. Rather than rush out to buy the 3GS with all it's new and useless features, people should have rushed out and taken advantage of the cheaper iPhone 3G.

The biggest improvement in the iPhone was actually the software, which 3G owners received as well.

Anyway, the point of this post was to present another useless technology that will be sold to you all for a "new" stupid price which will soon become the norm unless we steer clear:

The LG GD910 watch phone.

Who wants to hold the watch up to their ear all the time? No problem, LG cries. It has a bluetooth earpiece. Ok, so less battery life then?

My biggest problem with this kit is that it will cost £1000! You may as well go out and buy an iPhone 3GS and a Nokia N97!

Other than wanting to be Dick Tracey, why would anyone want this?

RoboGeisha

I’ve already mentioned my dislike and disappointment in Transformers 2 – but there is another film that may fill the void for a robot mashing movie.  Meet RoboGeisha!

GI Joe Bus Rider

This video is very old and it is one of the many Fensler films that made internet history - in fact - I am surprised to have found a link.

I just found myself singing it around the house:

Jamaica mon fus mi naily ded wid laugh,

a watching di people rush di door like harbour shark,

so come

fun time deh yah, a time fi di bus ride

sunshine deh yah a time fi di bus ride

sunshine deh yah a time fi di bus ride

fun time deh yah a time fi di bus ride

And if you're interested in the translation: Jamaica is the first place the singer has seen this and so it makes him laugh. Watching as the bus comes to pick up passengers, people rush to get position to the door like hungry harbour sharks. The bus ride home is made a fun experience due to variety of different people and the bus driver giving people an entertaining ride home. I'm not sure how much of that is true, but it's the best fit I've found. Anyone know any different?