The Verizon Galaxy Nexus (toro) is now back in AOSP. The Sprint GN (toroplus) is still out and there are no plans to add support for it.
The Invensense binary blobs (proprietary gyro/accelerometer) are now OK to distribute, but it's not clear how complete the new release really is.
What this means is that third-party apps can choose the native theme.
It does not necessarily mean that the user will be able to disable the "OEM experience".
You'll still be able switch out the launcher and use alternative apps for SMS, email etc. but you will probably not be able to uninstall Sense/TouchWiz/whatever and get the AOSP look and feel.
I've had one for a couple of weeks. UK GSM model (the "real" one : yakju/maguro).
Very happy. Replaced my N1 which finally gave up its power button after 18 months.
Pentaband radio works great on T-Mobile & AT&T.
Camera's better than the N1 - the speed it takes shots makes me happier than any extra MP, I think the pictures look great.
I'm not fussed about the expandability, although I only have 16GB (13.33GB formatted, it would appear). I've spent the last year and a half dealing with a 512MB application partition, so I don't really see the problem. USB mount handling is a bit surprising, especially as I'm on a Mac. I haven't bothered to install "Android Mount" or whatever Google are offering for download yet. Just using DropBox, and iPhoto picks up the device when in "Camera Mode".
It's real thin and it doesn't feel as good as the N1 or an iPhone, but this thing is going in a case. It fits in my pocket with my other phone, a Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro.
I had the SE X10 Mini Pro and the N1 for the last year, and in the last month upgraded both of them. I still find myself using the Sony more because of the real keyboard.
The only complaints I have about the Galaxy Nexus so far is that the screen is so big, I don't find it comfortable to use the on-screen keyboard in landscape. I have to stretch to reach the middle if I am typing with two thumbs. Speakerphone's not the best. Headphone jack is on the bottom, which totally tripped me out when I got it out of the box, but actually turns out not to matter at all (and is kind of neater in a cheapo dashboard gripper). I am very impressed with the battery life so far, but nothing comes close to the Mini Pro (normally 3-4 days). I am a fairly heavy user of my devices.
The wierdest thing is that the lump on the bottom, it just feels like it should be at the top and I still take it out of my pocket upside down every time. I'll get over that.
The two big GSM providers in the US use different 3G frequencies. (AT&T 850/1900, T-Mobile 1700/2100).
You can get voice and GPRS/EDGE, so long as your handset has been SIM unlocked (this is different to rooting or jailbreaking).
This is not an Android limitation, the same restrictions apply to iPhone/N900 etc.
I am not aware of any phone that has a flashable radio chipset allowing reconfiguration of the wireless bands, there may be a requirement for a physically different antenna.
The magic words used to be "quad-band", but nowadays you would want a radio that supported upwards of six bands for 3G capability across AT&T, T-Mobile, and rest of world.
I often discuss this with friends - what if Tony Blair had come to the British public and said:
"The US wants to go to war in Iraq. "We don't really have any grounds to do so, and operations in Afghanistan have hardly begun, but it looks like they're committed to removing Saddam Hussein, and soon. "It will take heavy public borrowing, soldiers' lives, and likely make us even more of a terrorist target, returning to conduct military operations in the ex-Empire. "By our standards, we can't agree to it, but they will be "sexing-up" what little facts there are to get the support of the US media and public, and it seems they will be going ahead even if the whole world is opposed to it. "It's not the right thing to do, but right now, I believe it's the right thing for the UK to back the US unconditionally in what they want to do."
It would never have happened, of course, much as I might wish for a world in which it did. Not one politician has ever truly believed in "transparent governance", especially Tony Blair. Also, it would not be the behaviour of an ally to publicly undermine the US gambit in this way. So, I can see how the UK might have wanted to say one thing publicly, and another thing privately to the US. The whole world knew exactly what was going on anyway.
The predominant reaction I am seeing to the WikiLeaks releases has simply been that people's suspicions are confirmed, albeit tinged with surprise that government actually seems to be such an amateurish business.
I wholly support WikiLeaks activities, but I understand the need for confidential communications. The diplomatic system is better than nothing at all. The whole affair is just fallout from a badly designed and implemented IT solution.
I used to use PartitionMagic in the past, never liked Ghost, and when I would regularly used Windows (a while ago) found the Acronis tools to be the best.
I had to do a couple of things on a friends machine and Google brought up Easeus. Works brilliantly.
I don't blame him, I would be hesitant of committing to shipping such a demanding, immersive application with the same performance on Android as can be delivered on iOS.
Android audio is a MESS. Even if it improves anytime soon, not all devices will be getting OS upgrades. Other unresolved issues I've mentioned are why fragmentation is becoming a more and more valid criticism of the platform. And to any fanboys with modpoints, I'm not a shill, I took a gamble investing my time in learning yet another platform, and I have to deal with these frustrations every day.
SD card slot. I'll complain about that. I haven't seen any one else make a note of it, so I will. The SD card slot is missing from the 11".
This is actually a really big deal for me. I have held off purchasing a newer netbook form-factor machine to see if Apple would deliver something and save me from building yet another hackintosh.
I can swallow the cost, it's the same as you'd pay for a similarly well-built HP like the 510x, once you've included SSD and screen upgrades. And it's designed to run OS X, so I don't have to worry about keeping my system up and running across reboots as if it was Windows or Linux, as is the case with a hackintosh.
So I watched the stream and waited patiently for the unveiling and it seemed to deliver. But I figured Apple must have gimped it somehow, there had to be something that left a bitter taste. Check the website and sure enough, no SD card slot on the 11". No neat integration for booting from cards Windows/Linux/etc like I do for my netbooks. I just cannot believe the engineers were unable to make it fit. I would have to carry a card reader now, use up one of two USB ports. I can even imagine Jobs saying "Netbooks have SD card slots. Lose it on the netbook sized Air and it definitely can't be called a netbook." I can't think of a machine this size that doesn't have one since the Eee was released.
Perhaps I'm silly to make this a deciding factor in my purchase. Perhaps I'd be silly buying a Rev.A Apple product anyway.
As well as crap interaction, the UI objects are damn ugly, and don't scale nicely. Date and time together don't fit on a single line of a regular screen. After using the iOS UIDatePicker I thought the Android offering was a joke.
The first time I read the API docs I was convinced it must be a joke. I scrolled around expecting it to say: "Obviously, developers should be using class X in preference to this steaming mess."
There is absolutely no consistency between the DatePicker and TimePicker classes. The DateView takes its listener in an init method (WHY??), the TimeView has a set method. The DateView is updated with a single call (or when you want to set the listener LOL), the TimeView has separate methods to set hours, minutes and AM/PM.
Actually making use of them is a massive headache. Come on guys, I probably want to handle my date/timestamp in UTC and as a localized string, at a bare minimum. It's pointless building on what's in the API because it doesn't even work properly! Time.format doesn't implement strftime options correctly, with no information about what is actually supported at all from the man page it refers you to. At least developers on Windows won't be misled.
App development for Android takes extra work handling these sort of things, because even if things are fixed in future versions not all devices will get the upgrade. The issue of fragmentation becomes more serious when such basic elements of the platform are left neglected for so long. This should have been put right after the first public release at the latest.
The Tesla Roadster is not particularly innovative. It is simply the lightest sports car chassis available (the Lotus Elise) loaded with 7000 laptop batteries. Anyone could have done this, given the up-front investment. This investment was relatively small, due to the minimal R&D and manufacturing capability required. Even the initial drivetrain design was licenced from AC Propulsion.
With just over 1200 Roadsters delivered, Tesla has negligible sales for the conventional auto industry. However, a price tag of $100,000 after tax rebates positions the Roadster in the supercar market, notwithstanding that Lotuses are among the cheapest performance cars, selling for a quarter of the price of the Tesla.
This strategy has created a company with over $120million revenue in under 5 years. Tesla created a strong enough brand to secure a $465million loan from the DoE, enabling them to buy the NUMMI plant shut down by Toyota last year.
While building their brand profile by assembling Roadsters from existing technology and not losing money on them, Tesla has raised nearly $200million in investment and have been developing their own EV technology. The drivetrains that will be produced at NUMMI are not based on the technology in the Roadster, they are new designs to be used in the Tesla Model S Sedan, the MkII RAV4 EV and other unannounced Toyota EVs.
So the government stimulates the creation of jobs and the cars of the future, and Toyota gets its old factory turned into an electric drivetrain plant for just $60million, courtesy of the ATVM Loan Program.
Sounds like everyone's a winner. Well, either that or DeLorean all over again.
I pay $39.99/month including taxes for "T-Mobile Total Internet Voice Bar".
Unlimited data (I have regularly exceeded 1GB a month, and occasionally much higher when tethering). SMS is enabled, but charged at $0.12 each. I don't use it anyway. Voice calling is barred.
I bought a Nexus One at launch, and I have free incoming and outgoing voice and text courtesy of Google Voice. I have a free SIPgate account to give me a number to forward GV to. I also have a Gizmo5 account, which is better integrated with GV, but introduces higher latency to voice calls and has noticeably poorer call quality.
I now also run Skype on the handset, as do my family abroad. No more international call charges. I have a predictable phone bill every month, which is all I ever wanted.
Verizon Android phones that do not have "Droid" branding are locked to Bing search. Switching from Bing to e.g. Google is not possible without a ROM flash. It is possible to install all the Google apps for voice search and maps, but Bing is cooked into the ROM as the default.
It's the result of a complicated mess of agreements between Google, LucasFilm, Microsoft, Motorola and Verizon. I have heard that Verizon got $500m up front for the Bing deal, and/or $2 per handset shipped.
You might note that Microsoft are suing only Motorola over Android patents, not HTC or even Google. The official line is that all the other companies are licensing patents from Microsoft, but Motorola are not. The fact is, Motorola is the only Android handset manufacturer who has not announced a Windows Phone 7 device. Food for thought.
Slashdot Mirror
I just watched "The Cape" on NetFlix with English subtitles on and at the end of each episode the URL of the subbing group comes up!
Ecuador does have the option of making him a diplomatic courier, which does not require Britain's approval and would confer the same protections.
At least Jeppesen don't have a base in Ecuador.
The Verizon Galaxy Nexus (toro) is now back in AOSP. The Sprint GN (toroplus) is still out and there are no plans to add support for it.
The Invensense binary blobs (proprietary gyro/accelerometer) are now OK to distribute, but it's not clear how complete the new release really is.
What this means is that third-party apps can choose the native theme.
It does not necessarily mean that the user will be able to disable the "OEM experience".
You'll still be able switch out the launcher and use alternative apps for SMS, email etc. but you will probably not be able to uninstall Sense/TouchWiz/whatever and get the AOSP look and feel.
I've had one for a couple of weeks. UK GSM model (the "real" one : yakju/maguro).
Very happy. Replaced my N1 which finally gave up its power button after 18 months.
Pentaband radio works great on T-Mobile & AT&T.
Camera's better than the N1 - the speed it takes shots makes me happier than any extra MP, I think the pictures look great.
I'm not fussed about the expandability, although I only have 16GB (13.33GB formatted, it would appear). I've spent the last year and a half dealing with a 512MB application partition, so I don't really see the problem. USB mount handling is a bit surprising, especially as I'm on a Mac. I haven't bothered to install "Android Mount" or whatever Google are offering for download yet. Just using DropBox, and iPhoto picks up the device when in "Camera Mode".
It's real thin and it doesn't feel as good as the N1 or an iPhone, but this thing is going in a case. It fits in my pocket with my other phone, a Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro.
I had the SE X10 Mini Pro and the N1 for the last year, and in the last month upgraded both of them. I still find myself using the Sony more because of the real keyboard.
The only complaints I have about the Galaxy Nexus so far is that the screen is so big, I don't find it comfortable to use the on-screen keyboard in landscape. I have to stretch to reach the middle if I am typing with two thumbs. Speakerphone's not the best. Headphone jack is on the bottom, which totally tripped me out when I got it out of the box, but actually turns out not to matter at all (and is kind of neater in a cheapo dashboard gripper). I am very impressed with the battery life so far, but nothing comes close to the Mini Pro (normally 3-4 days). I am a fairly heavy user of my devices.
The wierdest thing is that the lump on the bottom, it just feels like it should be at the top and I still take it out of my pocket upside down every time. I'll get over that.
JazzMutant have discontinued all their products in the face of the iPad. TouchOSC for iOS costs $4.99
LightScribe
Do they even *have* a full-time security staff in there online division?
They are hiring..
Where can you download Sun (Oracle) Java for Mac OS X ?
Imagine if folded responses suppressed quoted text.
No you don't! You only think you do...
Click. Click. Click. Click.
No.
The two big GSM providers in the US use different 3G frequencies. (AT&T 850/1900, T-Mobile 1700/2100).
You can get voice and GPRS/EDGE, so long as your handset has been SIM unlocked (this is different to rooting or jailbreaking).
This is not an Android limitation, the same restrictions apply to iPhone/N900 etc.
I am not aware of any phone that has a flashable radio chipset allowing reconfiguration of the wireless bands, there may be a requirement for a physically different antenna.
The magic words used to be "quad-band", but nowadays you would want a radio that supported upwards of six bands for 3G capability across AT&T, T-Mobile, and rest of world.
Thread past this point can be filed under "arguing on the internet".
I often discuss this with friends - what if Tony Blair had come to the British public and said:
"The US wants to go to war in Iraq.
"We don't really have any grounds to do so, and operations in Afghanistan have hardly begun, but it looks like they're committed to removing Saddam Hussein, and soon.
"It will take heavy public borrowing, soldiers' lives, and likely make us even more of a terrorist target, returning to conduct military operations in the ex-Empire.
"By our standards, we can't agree to it, but they will be "sexing-up" what little facts there are to get the support of the US media and public, and it seems they will be going ahead even if the whole world is opposed to it.
"It's not the right thing to do, but right now, I believe it's the right thing for the UK to back the US unconditionally in what they want to do."
It would never have happened, of course, much as I might wish for a world in which it did.
Not one politician has ever truly believed in "transparent governance", especially Tony Blair.
Also, it would not be the behaviour of an ally to publicly undermine the US gambit in this way.
So, I can see how the UK might have wanted to say one thing publicly, and another thing privately to the US.
The whole world knew exactly what was going on anyway.
The predominant reaction I am seeing to the WikiLeaks releases has simply been that people's suspicions are confirmed, albeit tinged with surprise that government actually seems to be such an amateurish business.
I wholly support WikiLeaks activities, but I understand the need for confidential communications.
The diplomatic system is better than nothing at all.
The whole affair is just fallout from a badly designed and implemented IT solution.
You are talking about BlackBerry.
I've moved to Android, but there's no denying that RIM have got integrated communications right.
Mod parent ironic.
I second this.
I used to use PartitionMagic in the past, never liked Ghost, and when I would regularly used Windows (a while ago) found the Acronis tools to be the best.
I had to do a couple of things on a friends machine and Google brought up Easeus.
Works brilliantly.
I don't blame him, I would be hesitant of committing to shipping such a demanding, immersive application with the same performance on Android as can be delivered on iOS.
I got modded down the last time I tried mentioning this, but as someone currently making an income from Android development:
Android audio is a MESS.
Even if it improves anytime soon, not all devices will be getting OS upgrades.
Other unresolved issues I've mentioned are why fragmentation is becoming a more and more valid criticism of the platform.
And to any fanboys with modpoints, I'm not a shill, I took a gamble investing my time in learning yet another platform, and I have to deal with these frustrations every day.
SD card slot. I'll complain about that.
I haven't seen any one else make a note of it, so I will.
The SD card slot is missing from the 11".
This is actually a really big deal for me.
I have held off purchasing a newer netbook form-factor machine to see if Apple would deliver something and save me from building yet another hackintosh.
I can swallow the cost, it's the same as you'd pay for a similarly well-built HP like the 510x, once you've included SSD and screen upgrades. And it's designed to run OS X, so I don't have to worry about keeping my system up and running across reboots as if it was Windows or Linux, as is the case with a hackintosh.
So I watched the stream and waited patiently for the unveiling and it seemed to deliver.
But I figured Apple must have gimped it somehow, there had to be something that left a bitter taste.
Check the website and sure enough, no SD card slot on the 11".
No neat integration for booting from cards Windows/Linux/etc like I do for my netbooks.
I just cannot believe the engineers were unable to make it fit.
I would have to carry a card reader now, use up one of two USB ports.
I can even imagine Jobs saying "Netbooks have SD card slots. Lose it on the netbook sized Air and it definitely can't be called a netbook."
I can't think of a machine this size that doesn't have one since the Eee was released.
Perhaps I'm silly to make this a deciding factor in my purchase.
Perhaps I'd be silly buying a Rev.A Apple product anyway.
Triple whoosh! All the way!
Whoa! That's so intense!
Whooooooaaa-oh my god!
Wow! Woooooooooooo!
This!!
As well as crap interaction, the UI objects are damn ugly, and don't scale nicely.
Date and time together don't fit on a single line of a regular screen.
After using the iOS UIDatePicker I thought the Android offering was a joke.
The first time I read the API docs I was convinced it must be a joke.
I scrolled around expecting it to say:
"Obviously, developers should be using class X in preference to this steaming mess."
There is absolutely no consistency between the DatePicker and TimePicker classes.
The DateView takes its listener in an init method (WHY??), the TimeView has a set method.
The DateView is updated with a single call (or when you want to set the listener LOL), the TimeView has separate methods to set hours, minutes and AM/PM.
Actually making use of them is a massive headache.
Come on guys, I probably want to handle my date/timestamp in UTC and as a localized string, at a bare minimum.
It's pointless building on what's in the API because it doesn't even work properly!
Time.format doesn't implement strftime options correctly, with no information about what is actually supported at all from the man page it refers you to. At least developers on Windows won't be misled.
App development for Android takes extra work handling these sort of things, because even if things are fixed in future versions not all devices will get the upgrade.
The issue of fragmentation becomes more serious when such basic elements of the platform are left neglected for so long. This should have been put right after the first public release at the latest.
Conspiracy theory? OK here goes:
The Tesla Roadster is not particularly innovative.
It is simply the lightest sports car chassis available (the Lotus Elise) loaded with 7000 laptop batteries.
Anyone could have done this, given the up-front investment.
This investment was relatively small, due to the minimal R&D and manufacturing capability required.
Even the initial drivetrain design was licenced from AC Propulsion.
With just over 1200 Roadsters delivered, Tesla has negligible sales for the conventional auto industry.
However, a price tag of $100,000 after tax rebates positions the Roadster in the supercar market, notwithstanding that Lotuses are among the cheapest performance cars, selling for a quarter of the price of the Tesla.
This strategy has created a company with over $120million revenue in under 5 years.
Tesla created a strong enough brand to secure a $465million loan from the DoE, enabling them to buy the NUMMI plant shut down by Toyota last year.
While building their brand profile by assembling Roadsters from existing technology and not losing money on them, Tesla has raised nearly $200million in investment and have been developing their own EV technology.
The drivetrains that will be produced at NUMMI are not based on the technology in the Roadster, they are new designs to be used in the Tesla Model S Sedan, the MkII RAV4 EV and other unannounced Toyota EVs.
So the government stimulates the creation of jobs and the cars of the future, and Toyota gets its old factory turned into an electric drivetrain plant for just $60million, courtesy of the ATVM Loan Program.
Sounds like everyone's a winner.
Well, either that or DeLorean all over again.
I pay $39.99/month including taxes for "T-Mobile Total Internet Voice Bar".
Unlimited data (I have regularly exceeded 1GB a month, and occasionally much higher when tethering).
SMS is enabled, but charged at $0.12 each. I don't use it anyway.
Voice calling is barred.
I bought a Nexus One at launch, and I have free incoming and outgoing voice and text courtesy of Google Voice.
I have a free SIPgate account to give me a number to forward GV to. I also have a Gizmo5 account, which is better integrated with GV, but introduces higher latency to voice calls and has noticeably poorer call quality.
I now also run Skype on the handset, as do my family abroad. No more international call charges.
I have a predictable phone bill every month, which is all I ever wanted.
Verizon Android phones that do not have "Droid" branding are locked to Bing search.
Switching from Bing to e.g. Google is not possible without a ROM flash.
It is possible to install all the Google apps for voice search and maps, but Bing is cooked into the ROM as the default.
It's the result of a complicated mess of agreements between Google, LucasFilm, Microsoft, Motorola and Verizon.
I have heard that Verizon got $500m up front for the Bing deal, and/or $2 per handset shipped.
You might note that Microsoft are suing only Motorola over Android patents, not HTC or even Google.
The official line is that all the other companies are licensing patents from Microsoft, but Motorola are not.
The fact is, Motorola is the only Android handset manufacturer who has not announced a Windows Phone 7 device.
Food for thought.