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It appears the difference is that Cornerstone allows the user to decide which app would be windowed, however MultiWindow requires the developers of the application to support it. Googles complain appears to be arround users mistaking an application that does not support Cornerstone for a crappy application. Which is kind-off fair

Cornerstone - Make it application opt-in.

Then there's the cable, which looks like standard PDMI connectors.

Oh, I forgot to say that you are also wrong about that: the Samsung Galaxy Tab does NOT have a PDMI connector. In fact, the connector is almost identical to the iPhone/iPad connector (the pins themselves are flipped across, otherwise they are identical) and totally different to a PDMI connector, as you can see in the pictures here.

See? Another example of people designing an original alternative to an Apple part vs. Samsung copied it with minimum modification.

(Damned Slashdot is putting me on a time out for posting too fast.)

Early alpha ROM's are available for ZTE Blade as well. Possible slowest and cheapest Android phone what is still available on market.
Here you can find the process from 4 days ago (1st December) http://android.modaco.com/topic/348898-ics-compiled-for-zte-blade/page__p__1850381#entry1850381 and as you can see, few things ain't working (like camera). OpenGL acceleration has been sayd to work at later thread but I dont know does it work.

What Modaco and CM teams are possible to do, why cant manufacturers really maintain 2 year those phones? Contract people can not usually buy a new one where SIM or phone is locked. So they could just maintain the good user experience and user base by updateing Android. And then when contract needs to be changed or continued, they could get same manufacturer but better phone by that experience!

short list of ZTE Blade specs
ARM6 600Mhz CPU (MSM7227)
Adreno 200 GPU (Integrated to CPU, and is same as earliest snapdragon CPU's)
512 RAM
512 NAND Flash
480x800 Super bright LCD
1250mAh (4 hour 3G talk time, about 3.5h video playtime, 7h music playtime and little over 200 hour stand by time)

Full specs here (without OpenGL extensions listed):
CPU
Name: ARMv6-compatible processor rev 5 (v5l)
Current freq.: 600 MHz
Max freq.: 600 MHz
Min freq.: 122.88 MHz
Cores: 1
Architecture: 6TEJ
BogoMIPS: 599.65
Hardware: blade ZTE handset
Revision: 5
Serial #: 0000000000000000

Memory
Total: 424884 kB
Free: 107552 kB
Inactive: 94424 kB

Display
Resolution: 480x800
Refresh rate: 0.1 Hz

GPU (OpenGL)
Vendor: Qualcomm
Renderer: Adreno
Version: OpenGL ES-CM 1.1

Max texture units: 2
Max texture size: 1024
Max lights: 8

VBO: supported
Frame buffers: unsupported
Cube maps: supported
Texture combiners: supported
DOT3 combiner: supported
Crossbar combiner: supported

Are you UK based? Then Orange San Fransisco (ZTE Blade) for less than GBP100 on PAYG. Lots of community support. Comes with 2.1 but 2.2 and early 2.3 available:

http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blade-roms-rom-customisation/332509/rom-cyanogenmod-7-for-zte-blade-san-francisco-v7-0-0-rc1-02-16-2011/

I was thinking of the T-mobile Pulse (Huawei U8220):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile_Pulse
http://wiki.modaco.com/index.php/Huawei_U8220
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/pay-as-you-go/t-mobile-pulse-payg/

Unfortunately, a quick look at ebay suggests you'd pay about $100 USD more over there (the reverse of the usual situation!).

There's also a Pulse Mini (U8110), with a smaller (& resistive) touchscreen for 80 GBP:

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/pay-as-you-go/t-mobile-pulse-mini/

There are other cheap PAYG Android phones over here too - O2 has the LG Optimus for 120 GBP, Three has something called the 'ZTE Racer' for around 100 GBP, etc. We even do pretty well on net tariffs - 20 GBP will buy you 6 months worth of net access on T-mobile (not the best network, but adequate where I live). Of course, we pay more for pretty much everything else...

Hi Milamber,

I implore you: Please inform yourself about the situation with the Desire before telling me I just don't know what I'm talking about. Try these links (just the first two Google results for "read write system desire"):

http://android.modaco.com/content/htc-desire-desire-modaco-com/315002/htc-desire-system-partition-write-access-in-progress/
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=690744

After reading just a few of the posts in each thread, you should get an idea of the situation. There is a solution that has been proposed, and does work, in theory, but IIRC it involves an overlay file system that caches writes until the device is rebooted... or something like that.

About this AOSP ROM on the Droid X: How was the kernel modified? Since you can't boot a completely different kernel, you would have to modify the existing one at runtime... do you have any more information about this? I would love to see a link for it...

As for your point about full NAND access and custom kernels not going away: I wish I could share your optimism. As a former Milestone owner I've seen what manufacturers can do on a whim, and contrary to the headlines circulating in blogs lately, we've seen that it's definitely possible to lock down devices to a level that makes them uninteresting for modders. I would advise you to take a closer look at the Milestone situation, as it should give you a very good idea about the challenges that will be faced by users of subsequent Motorola devices like the Droid X.

I do not know if you are aware but did you check how "easy" it was to mod more recent models such as the HTC Legend and HTC Desire??

Well, let me tell you it is _not_ easy. HTC also implements protections:

http://android.modaco.com/content/htc-legend-legend-modaco-com/305927/htc-legend-root-update/

and so does any other phone manufacturer for that matter.

So to say that HTC "might be passively encouraging modding" might be a bit overboard...

Besides the fact that the link to the file in the summary didn't work, there are other potential problems if you click through to the source (on the forums, not the blog linked here).

The procedure that's linked to will get you to 2.2, but it won't be rooted even if you were rooted before.

I just did the classic "spend two hours trying to fix what you screwed up" routine trying to get it rooted again so that I could run the backup created by titanium backup, which requires root.

For those interested, the steps for a fool-proof upgrade if you're rooted are:

-Do a full backup using titanium backup first, obviously
-Install Amon Ra 1.7 custom recovery loader: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=611829
-Use it to flash the zip file update-nexusone-FRF50-signed.zip from here: http://android.modaco.com/content/google-nexus-one-nexusone-modaco-com/309286/frf50-froyo-pre-rooted-update-zip/ - note that this wouldn't flash for me using the stock recovery loader (which requires renaming it to update.zip but it fails saying it's unsigned), hence the custom one above
-Use it again to flash froyo-rooter-signed.zip from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=686627
-Restore your backup

Acer... they just pulled the screw your existing customers by not supporting them stunt on the Liquid One. While having good hardware, the phone is a no buy.

Excuse me?

The 2.1 firmware leaks for A1 are apparently falling from the sky then? It's not like Acer is about to publish official eclair firmware? In modaco forum they're up to 3rd leaked 2.1 firmware now unless I'm mistaken.

Acer has also released 1.6 firmware update that helps on the abysmal release battery life. This phone still needs a 3rd party battery, thought.

However, if you want to use VS2008, you need professional edition which is considerably more expensive than $200.

So is an Eee PC, but that doesn't mean you'd want to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2GQxwkUHo0

http://netbooks.modaco.com/content/asus/261965/installing-vista-on-the-eee-701-ive-done-it-and-it-works/

Get an MSI Wind and then go here: http://www.modaco.com/content/asus-eee-pc-http-www-eeeasy-com/270099/pauls-complete-guide-to-installing-osx-leopard-on-your-msi-wind-advent-4211/

You'll need to purchase a different Wi-Fi card for it, and you may need to purchase a 6-cell battery seperately, but the rest of the hardware pretty much works as it should. Only thing you're really losing are the headphone and microphone jacks.

I didn't believe it either, but did a search and found this:
http://www.modaco.com/content/asus-eee-pc-http-www-eeeasy-com/261965/installing-vista-on-the-eee-ive-done-it-and-it-works/
So it looks like it is possible...
Not rushing to do it on my Eee though!

You sure they didn't just make their own icons that looked SIMILAR to what had been seen in the media reports on the iPhone?

Am I sure? Not 100%. But from the FA, "The skins don't add any new functionality to the devices, but make use of the iPhone's copyrighted icons to create a UI that distinctly resembles Apple's hybrid mobile phone."

See also this forum post with an Apple C&D letter posted. The icons came from a screenshot.

You can get a third party app called magicbutton which does what you want. By default it will close something if you push the X, but you can set up inclusions/exclusions, so that frequency used apps stay in the background.

I suggest heading over to http://www.modaco.com/

See QR codes (2D barcodes) in action and download for your phone here:

http://www.modaco.com/Quickmark-QR-Code-Software-f or-your-Smartphone-your-phone-as-QR-Code-scanner-t 243287.html/

Fantasically geeky ;)

P

Here, Paul posts a fuller account of the story including some details about Orange, and other involved parties.

http://www.modaco.com/MoDaCo_Summer_Event_2005_C55 0_theft_SOLVED_-t227175.html

Excerpt:

Me: Hi, this is Paul from MoDaCo.
Cocky: Er, Hi.
Me: You have something of mine, and I want it back.
Cocky: So what do we do now?
Me: Do you still have the phone? Have you sold it?
Cocky: I still have it - minus the box. What are you going to do?
Me: I'm giving you one chance... send me the phone, via Special Delivery, today, and I will not go to the Police. I'm gonna ban your ass for life and expose you on the forum, but I won't go to the police.
Cocky: OK

Another slightly more detailed account of the same event:

Detailed Account

Mono, Orange and Microsoft arrived early, and set out all of the stuff for the event... including the raffle prizes. The prizes were, foolishly it seems, laid out in the corner... footballs, kites, goodies and an SPV C550!

We are not entirely sure at which point the phone was stolen... but a number of people witnessed what appeared to be the C550 being wrapped in a cardigan and placed in a bag along with a couple of other items including an Orange football, and a kite that was apparently discarded.

At some point, probably prior to the raffle, the thief or his companion probably left the building, and took the C550 somewhere for safe keeping.

As those present at the event will know, when the theft was discovered, Monolithix (who should be commended for staying calm!) offered the thief every opportunity to return the phone with no comeback, pointing out the phone would be useless anyway as it would be blocked on all UK networks... but nobody came forward. Having spoken to 'cocky', he said he was afraid to come forward.

At this point, there was not a lot more we could do... we liaised with the staff at the Microsoft building, and determined that although there was no CCTV in the room, there was CCTV in the foyer.

On the following Monday, I contacted Orange to ask for the IMEI of the stolen phone so that we could conduct investigations, which Orange duly provided. I also investigated whether we could determine whether the stolen phone had been used with an Orange SIM (99% necessary if the thief unlocks the phone), and Orange confirmed that they could do this, albeit with a 1 week delay. This provided us with one possible avenue... although for Data Protection reasons, pursuing this route would have required the action to be taken with the Police.

I considered it very likely that the thief would have tried to unlock the phone... so armed with the IMEI of the stolen phone... I contacted the key players in the C550 unlock scene, Florin from IMEI-check and zone-mr from SPV-Developers.

Florin confirmed that the phone had not been unlocked with IMEI-check... however zone-mr couldn't confirm immediately, as he only retains an temporary backup of encrypted data from the phone, which he wasn't sure included the IMEI

A couple of hours later, on Monday evening, zone-mr contacted me to let me know he WAS storing the IMEI... and we had a match! Our thief HAD unlocked his C550... at 10:30pm on Saturday in fact! Even better news... careful analysis of the server logs on the spv-developers unlock server gave us the IP address of our thief!

The next step was to find out as much information as possible about the thief. We determined their ISP and some other information, and thought about how to proceed. On an off chance that the thief was foolish enough to unlock the phone from the same connection they used to browse MoDaCo... I checked out the MoDaCo logs, and the MoDaCo sessions table.

Success!

Our thief was logged on, and the logs were full of the IP address in question... all pointing to one user.... COCKY!

Cross matching this address with the Event registration list confirmed that cocky HAD attended the event... and not only that... upon further consultation we determined that cocky was the person that witnesses had cast suspicion on.

The next step was how to decide how to proceed, armed with the evidence that we were sure conclusively led us to our thief. I stayed up late on Monday night and prepared a dossier of evidence, with excerpts from server logs, witness statements etc. to pass to the Police. After a late night... I decided to sleep on it before deciding how to proceed.

Tuesday came, and I decided that I was going to contact the Police... and spoke to both our contacts at Orange, and a contact at Orange security, about how to proceed. As the morning prog

http://www.modaco.com/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00

"You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use MoDaCo to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy , or otherwise violative of any law. "

You're wrong. It is supposed to be MaDoCo not DoCoMo

Howard forums are MUCH larger than modaco, re: smartphones. See for yourself.

http://smartphone.modaco.com/index.php

has:

414 user(s) active in the past 30 minutes
  379 guests, 35 members 0 anonymous members

while

http://howardforums.com/

has:
Currently Active Users: 3410 (1128 members and 2282 guests)

This 7+ minute wait between replys is excessive. I'll contact my councilwoman... when she gets back from her vacation.

Here is the turd making a comment on the thread regarding the event and the missing phone.

http://www.modaco.com/Event_pictures_and_a_plea_-t 225214-s15.html

What an idiot.

That's not true at all. I sync with two PC's and have done since the first Smartphone. On the second PC connecting, you are asked if you want to use both, or delete the existing. When you connect to a third PC, you are given the option to remove one of the existing ones. I use the sync feature a lot, as it effectively allows you to sync all your callendar, contacts and tasks between two PCs, my home and office one basically. Having one global contact list is great, worth doing for that reason alone.

Agreed on boot time, right pain in the ass. Crashes I found rare, depends on a lot of things like the apps you install, or how good the bundled software the network provider puts on. Some are really bad in that respect.

You can do all your changes thru a desktop app, check out the free (as in beer) Remote Display util from Microsoft. Yeah, entering server addresses and especially non-weak passwords on a phone keypad is really sucky.

You get charged for everything: there is seemingly no community, but just software vendors.

To a certain extent that is true. There are heaps of free apps available though that do just about anything you need, and some of the free games are really good as well. However, I have moaned publicly about the lack of community in the OS in terms of software development. Some of the user groups, such as this one do have a great and helpful community, it's just that the creators of the free apps don't embrace OSS at all. :-(

Microsoft has a lot of work here before they kill anything. I'm hating this thing so much that I'm about ready to go back to my "dumb" phone and PDA combo that I used before.

Don't give up just yet, it was free for you so you might as well give it a chance. Check out Modaco where you'll find all the apps, games and help you'll need. Perhaps you'll be turned to the dark side; I was, though nowadays I'm on the Windows Mobile PDA devices.

I've just moved to an Orange SPV C500 from an iPaq 5455. The only thing I miss from the 5455 is WiFi. but everything else I need (MP3 / Ogg, mpeg, reasonable mail client and browser, VNC, Camera & Vidcamera, FTP, Document reader, Calendar and Addressbook) is in the smartphone.

Most of it can be done with freeware or ships as standard as well.

http://www.modaco.com/ may have some details on when they will be in the USA. ....oh yeah, that won't work here as it's an MS smartphone :)

Oh, and the same phone had a 3D game available for it about a year and a half ago. Yawn. Old news. You can already get off-the-shelf 3D development engines for phone games.

Once you tweak it and install some useful apps - such as a Task Manager. No exit commands on most programs = sluggish performance. I've had mine for about 6-7 months now and its superbly nippy having used the tweaks at Modaco - forum for Smartphones. Can't remember the last time it crashed and it plays movies, gameboy games fine. Even NetHack. :) Plus as I'm wee, I can use the buttons no problems. No audio problems for me in London/Oxford either..

Check out the SPV, which runs the same OS platform as the P800. I've got one, very cool toy. MSN Messenger on a mobile phone, great idea.

There's various software being put together for it, some emulators and divx players (had "Attack of the Clones" on my phone for a while) are already up and running, plus several decent games.

Discussion of these Smartphones mostly takes place at Modaco

Well after reading through the Orange SPV
community site

You find that some people actually defend Orange&Microsoft for releasing a buggy SmartPhone based cellphone.