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HTC Dream (Android) Video Emerges
Barence writes "A video purporting to show the new Android-based handset from HTC has surfaced online. The video claims to show the HTC Dream, with its orientation sensor in action, automatically flipping the screen as the user changes from holding it horizontally to vertically. HTC announced earlier this month that it would be ready to release an Android handset before the end of the year, with speculation that this referred to the Dream handset."
"automatically flipping the screen as the user changes from holding it horizontally to vertically."???? It shows the user opening the phone and the oriententation changes!!!! Current HTC phones do that!!!! Where the "WOW" factor?
Did you watch the same video I did? The phone definitely has a touch screen.
For the most part the experience is pretty slick. Coming from using the iPhone for a year now some of the navigation paradigms seemed foreign so it took a little getting used to.
For one thing, the screen rotation is not detected but dependent on whether or not the screen is slid out. When the handset is closed the screen is in a vertical orientation and when the handset is open and the keyboard is exposed the screen is in a horizontal orientation.
There is no onscreen keyboard so the only way to actually do input is with the screen open. It's kind of annoying because you might be using it with one hand in vertical mode and come to a point where you have to type in something so you have to stop, rotate the device, open the screen and then start typing.
One big feature it has over the iPhone is copy/paste. It only works on input fields but at least you've got something.
The google maps street view compass thing was pretty slick and worked just as I had seen demoed. Overall I think it will be some good healthy competition and hopefully force Apple to open up their platform a little more.
As far as development goes there's no approval process or dictator mandating unpublished UI rules. You can download the eclipse IDE, plug in the phone via USB and deploy apps right to the phone or publish a file that can be downloaded and installed.
For people who require a physical keyboard, this will be the phone to have.
I still jailbreak mine, even though the big reason was ssh. The remaining reasons that keep me doing it:
1. Customizing the interface (i.e. personalizing the graphics & such).
2. SSH daemon on the phone itself, something Apple will never allow on App Store.
3. 'Cause I can
1. Some types of apps will never be in the App Store, including those that do any background work, those that Apple sees as threatening the security of the device, or those that may threaten Apple's business model in any way.
2. As far as I know there's no way to put music on the un-jailbroken iPhone without using iTunes, which leaves Linux users out in the cold. (Don't bother with Wine.)
My most-used jailbreak apps include: a full-text copy of Wikipedia, a tool to sync to Google Calendar, an alternate UI for the music player, a live Last.fm scrobbler, a way to play arbitrary videos copied from my computer, a detailed wi-fi detector, and a podcast downloader/player. Most of those wouldn't be allowed on the App Store.
The one AppStore-only app that interests me is Pandora.
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.