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Android 2.2 Features Announced By Google

Today at the Google IO keynote, Google announced the new features that Android 2.2 code named "Froyo" will introduce. Android 2.2 will be available via update for the super popular Sprint HTC EVO 4G phone this July!

Hopefully, I didn't misread that. "Via update" implied a supported process to me, not rooting, or ad hoc or something.

There are lots of places on the web that tell you how to hotspot your Android phone, the EVO just makes it simpler.

FWIW - just so you know - Android 2.2 is coming to EVO in July from Sprint - no mucking about to install Froyo by rooting, etc. I can't wait, got my EVO yesterday, replaced my Samsung Moment (that was a great phone too, IMO - but the EVO is just better).

http://www.evdoinfo.com/

Real world Verizon 3g (EV-DO Rev A) is between 2-3mbps down and .25-.5mbps up. I have personally seen these speeds is over a dozen metro areas around the country. EV-DO coverage is what is shown on that map in the commercial. Very rarely do I ever drop back to 1X (2g) service, logging over 80k miles of driving around the country in the past 2 years, I have used it everywhere from Manhattan to the West Virginia sticks. EVDO has some info on speeds - http://www.evdoinfo.com/

The world's fastest 3G network

But see here for some caveats.

AT&T has fairly good 3G coverage in all major US cities. And the best performance by far, where you can find coverage.

If you're a traveller who frequents many areas (esp. small towns) or live in one of those small cities with spotty ATT coverage for 3G, then you will probably want Sprint or Verizon.

Although their networks are generally slower, and the experience is generally poorer (on average), they have a lot more area covered.

So again: ATT is clearly the superior choice if you live in a well-covered area and don't go too far from home.

Verizon is a superior choice for most other areas.

For a moderate number of areas, Sprint will give you a better service, and there are a small number of areas where T-Mobile will be the best service.

Now service/coverage might not be the only you are concerned about, you may be interested in price too... you might pick a T-Mobile service based on price, even though it's not the best service for your area.

You might pick ATT, because they don't lock down features on your blackberry or other smartphone like Verizon does.

Then again, you might not want ATT, because of them restricting tethering on certain phones, Verizon may be the best choice there, depending on your needs.

So without knowing, how particular you are about what phone and what features you really need. It's a toss-up.

However, with ATT and the iPhone it's hard to go wrong (except on price, and except if you frequent relatively unpopulated rural areas...).

The Sprint MiFi enables the GPS functionality and allows for Sprint's "Location Based Services" that will plot onto a Google map the restaurants/banks/shopping/gas/etc that are near by. Verizon disables the GPS capabilities of the MiFi!

As an avid iPod touch user (and iPhone if Apple ever gets one onto Verizon . . .)

PHS-300 + Verizon UM-175 + iPod touch does nearly what you want. If only Apple would release an iPod touch with a camera and GPS chip.

    I had some good success with Verizon Wireless. Really, it depends on where you are , to how good the service will be. I've had better than 1Mb/s down while driving. Then again, I've had what felt like double digit bytes per seconds in not so great areas.

    After one move I had a problem. The DSL provider said they could service the house. We gave them two weeks notice to get the new line ready. They were "provisioning" it for 3 weeks, until they finally said they couldn't do it. {sigh}

    So we put in an order with the cable company. It took 2 weeks for the "install package" to come in, and 3 more days after I plugged it in for it to actually work. During that period, I had a PC with my Verizon Wireless air card up, and it acted as my NAT for the other computers. It wasn't a great area for cell service, because of the mountains. Even the wireless service was hit and miss. I swear, when it got windy, the service would go down. More likely, trees were blowing between my card and the tower, but I still blame the wind. :)

    I highly recommend getting a card that has a jack for an external antenna. It makes a HUGE difference in service quality. Check out evdoinfo.com for good information on the card offerings from Verizon and Sprint.

    The Verizon card gave me one thing that you can't get from a residential or business provider. I had my laptop running on a cross country drive, feeding telemetry (GPS data and video) to my web site, so friends and family could see what I saw and where I was. I got a call in the middle of the desert, asking if I was ok. I showed to be about 20 feet off the road, not moving, and facing desolate nothing. In reality, I was tired, pulled off into a rest area, parked the car facing away from the only building there, and was taking a nap. The rest area was new, so it didn't show on Google Maps yet, which is what I was using to show my location. I hadn't looked when I stopped, I just saw a place to sleep so I took it.

    I opened one eye enough to look at the screen, saw where I was on the map (100 miles from nowhere, parked 20 feet off the road), confirmed that's where I was, told them it's a rest area now, and went back to sleep. :) After a couple hours, I woke back up, checked my email, did a little online recon to see what was ahead (not a damned thing), and then started driving again.

    Sure there were some dead spots. My phone would drop, and the Internet connection would usually follow behind by about a minute. The card's antenna was suction cupped to the windshield, so it had a better signal than the phone. That was very intermittent though. Most of the time I had at least some sort of service. :)

Why not just get an aircard? You can get wireless EVDO routers like this one from keyocera. http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/264/63/ Or even get a pci to pcmcia adapter, this will allow you to use one in your PC. They sell them at newegg for under $20.00. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124021Y I used a Verizon air card for over a year and ran a 5 computer network off it. I had to use an external antenna as I had no signal with my pc on the floor in the corner of my room.It was made by Wilson they call it their "Trucker Cellular Antenna" http://www.wpsantennas.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=3 It cost me 100 bucks but was well worth the investment. It wasn't cable but it sure beat dial-up. I now have a wireless setup that uses Motorola Canopy technology that rocks!!!

Wireless Internet on cell phones is completely useless right now. Sure, it would be a great convience to use the full Internet on your phone, but there is a huge problem here: phone companies are quick and eager to start these new services, but most customers are still on those dumb "1 cent per kb" deals! They are upgrading the technology, but not the business model.

That's not entirely true, as evidenced by Verizon's awesome "$0.49/MB past your allowance" plan. <sarcasm>Wow, thanks Verizon!!</sarcasm>

Most of that list was my observation of the iPhone.

The keyboard "stinks" for me. I could not type well, but I only gave it half an hour. I see a lot of frustration in my future if I get an iPhone.

Personal usage patterns? I don't follow. Everything on my list was a specific pro or con not related to my usage pattern. Either you can do something or you can't. I can't type on the iPhone keyboard, is that due to my usage pattern? Maybe I should give up typing...

As for shareware, I have a MP3 player and chess installed on my 650. I included links for some things that are available on the 755p, but not much is installed on my 650. The three others I want are the GPS addon, the stereo bluetooth, and the tether to PC option. Not a lot of additional cruft, but more than you can add to an iPhone.

Maybe I missed some pros of the iPhone, but there are specific pros there on the list. Thin, widescreen, better camera. The GUI comment was meant to be funny, because that really seems to be what is selling this thing. Rational arguments based on capability appear to be overridden by the GUI, and that was the point.

I have to keep my keyboard locked to avoid calling people. But for usefulness, the five way rocker is great. I don't need a stylus anymore, once you know how to get around in all the Palm applications.

BTW, the EVDO on the current 755p runs a 500 Kbps link for a tethered laptop. EVDO Rev A may come on the 755p from Verizon, and it runs 600 to 1400 Kbps. Not sure what EDGE runs, but it looks like around 100.
http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/2009/63/
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9487/verizon-co mpletes-network-upgrade-to-ev-do-rev.-a/
http://www.timeatlas.com/mos/Cell_Phones/Prospect/ EvDO_and_EDGE_Offer_High_Speed_Access/

It's called EVDO . EVDO uses cell phone signals to deliver broadband access to laptops etc. Speeds up to 2Mbit/sec. I've personally seen about 80KByte/sec or about 768Kbit/sec (0.7Mbit/sec). Speeds may have improved since I last used Verizon's service in 2006.

EVDO isn't much better now. A lot of DSL subscribers are still that slow. 384k is perfectly usable for most things you need to do on the net (email, remote desktop, web browsing, game playing), it just takes longer for downloading large files or watching streaming video. Tell my parents out in the boonies that still use dialup that it wouldn't be an improvement, or people that can't afford the rates for cell-based wireless. Also, 95% sounds pretty dang good for driving around the country.

http://www.evdoinfo.com/The_News/Latest_News/Veriz on_Airfone_to_Offer_Inflight_Wireless_Broadband_20 051212646/

The web caching that you are referring to is called Venturi. On Windows, it is automatically installed during the install process. Venturi gets in the way of many apps, including some VPN and, the Venturi proxy servers are listed on spam lists, so it is impossible to send email (it gets bounced on remote SMTP servers). Venturi is great at producing misleading benchmarks, since the benchmark sites benchmark the Venturi servers vs. your EVDO connection, see this URL for more info: http://www.evdoinfo.com/EVDO/Info/EVDO_SuperCharge d_5000K_2005022369/

Okay, here's an hour and a half of research into my bandwidth (on a Saturday morning):

• Verizon PC 5220 card, no booster antenna: 158 kbps
  • 7 trials
  • high 677, low 39
  • standard deviation 216 kbps
• Verizon PC 5220 card, with booster antenna: 485 kbps
  • 7 trials
  • high 772, low 51
  • standard deviation 292 kbps
• Covad DSL: 472 kpbs
  • 7 trials
  • high 607, low 381
  • standard deviation 74 kbps

The Verizon PC 5220 card is in a PowerBook. The Covad DSL is plugged into a Power Mac. The laptop performance was measured lying in bed, next to my sleeping wife.

Coverage is pretty good for me. My wife drove us from north Alexandria to Fair Oaks Mall out in Fairfax, I was surfing the web all the way.

Yeah, the slow upload won't let you run a server, but lots of companies provide webhosting, some for little money. Works for me.

Notes:

1. I researched and bought the EVDO plan at http://www.evdoinfo.com/.
2. Bandwidth was measured using "CNET.com - Internet Services - BandWidthMeter Results" ( http://reviews.cnet.com/Bandwidth_meter/7004-7254_ 7-0.html, 2005-06-25T07:40/P1H).
3. Calculation of standard deviation was done at http://invsee.asu.edu/srinivas/stdev.html.

(end notes)

Verizon Offers a EVDO which is 'claimed' to be 2.4Megabit, reality is you're downstream is 700-300k if you're in a good area. Otherwise you're stuck with National Access, which is 114k downstream. Note, it's 114k upstream on EVDO anywho. Same with Sprint, nothing new there. Problem is the CDMA cards, don't like Wifi onboard. Centrino Chipsets and Wifi Chipsets tend to mess with them badly. GSM cards, are ALOT slower. I do mean ALOT slower. They start at 56k and go barely up. You might be able to get a 300k connection with GSM, little higher. But generally Wireless Providers don't want you to use them like Broadband connections, and even viewing Streaming Media is generally against their TOS. Plus you're paying 80$ wether you can use it or not. Coverage isn't that great really, and for the most part it's just not that great. If you're needing internet access in an Airport, or on the run in alot of big city's. Great you can use it, otherwise it's really not that great. There was an article on STOMPBOX earlier with a Verizon Card, he touched on some of the weakness's. It drops alot. The connection goes 'dormant' and while you're still connected it's a dead connection. So you basically have to run ping constantly in order to not loose the connection. If you are serious, check out http://www.evdoinfo.com/

Verizon calls their EV-DO service 'BroadbandAccess'; I have it on an Audiovox XV6600 phone (Windows Mobile and phone).

My experience

The service works very well and has been as reliable as my cellular voice calls. I forget it's there or that it's anything revolutionary, which is a good sign of it's usability. Latency is high, but it's just a little annoying in practice; I haven't tried anything interactive like chat, but some people claim to have used VOIP and iChat video conferencing with great success -- see these resources for that and other useful info:
http://evdoinfo.com/
http://evdoforums.com/

Note that upload speed is only promised to be 60-80 Kbps.

The Audiovox XV6600 phone is low quality: Bugs, crashes, talktime way too little (extra/larger battery almost required) , earpiece volume too low, bluetooth problems, etc etc etc. For early adopters only, really. I wanted it EV-DO badly enough, so I decided to live with it. The best resources on the phone (really an HTC Blue Angel, rebranded):
http://www.xda-developers.com/
http://www.pdaphonehome.com/

The phone is ~$45/month for unlimited service. A pcmcia card is ~$80/month. Note that the terms of service prohibit using the phone as to provide access to other devices.

Terms of service

Verizon's terms of service probibit downloading or streaming music, and other things. If you use the phone, the terms prohibit using it to bridge Internet service to other devices. More details here:
http://evdoforums.com/about77.html

OTOH, I've never heard of that being enforced, but I'm not sure that I would.

Vendor plans for rollout

Some info here:
http://evdoforums.com/forum-9.html

We posted something last month that was a 'technology preview', that was close to this. Glad it is working, very cool! http://www.evdoinfo.com/Tips/PC_5220/EVDO_GPS_WebC am_Mapping_20050323147/

You are benchmarking 1xRTT (40k - 90k) and comparing it to EVDO (500k - 700k). Of course, 1xRTT will be slightly faster than dial-u and more comparable to other slower technologies. If you are in an EVDO area (this is the key), EVDO ROCKS! Here is a page the discusses the differences: http://www.evdoinfo.com/Tips/PC_5220/Help%2C_EVDO_ is_SLOW%2C_or_what_is_1xRTT_and_EVDO_2005030992/

I did exactly this 2 days ago. iChat AV 2 way video while going 60 MPH, see this link for pictures and a quicktime video (it was very cool).

http://www.evdoinfo.com/Tips/PC_5220/EVDO_iChat_2_ Way_Video_at_60_MPH_2005031194/