Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Today we had the last even of the Android Developer Labs ADL 2010 in Hong Kong – hosted by Google for free! I attended and I was more than surprised about how many Android developers and interested people actually showed up. Traditionally, the development community in Hong Kong is very small. Check out a part of the long registration line here:
And that’s actually after half of the participants already checked in. The venue was considerably crowded and I would say nearly 80% of the available seats were taken.
Below at the left side you can see a banner of the Hong Kong Google Technology User Group. Seems to sound like a nice idea, if you want to know about that, check it out here: Hongkong GTUG
As I didn’t follow previous ADL events I didn’t know that every registered participant gets a free Nexus One. To my surprise, Google had a big box with loads of N1 devices and I got another one – for free! Check out the developers lining up for the free Nexus One:
Below you can see all these dudes with white Nexus One boxes.
Nice event Google! The best step is definitely to give developers free phones. You can have the best simulator / emulator, but it is always a different experience when you run your application on a real phone. This is very important proper mobile application development. You need to use your application on a real phone – only then you figure out what you actually did wrong. Google definitely understood this. Thanks Google.
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Tags: , 2010, ADL, android, china, developer, free, gtug, hong kong, labs, n1, nexus, one
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Thursday, February 25th, 2010
It is done. Google Earth for Android has been published. I just ran it on my Nexus One and it seems to work fine. Very smoothly, nice 3D graphics and all the layers in there with your favorite restaurants. Zooming in and out as well as panning in the 3D world works totally fine. Besides that it is not doing much, but it shows your current location on the earth, of course. Still, well done Google!
Check it out here:
Tags: Earth, google, gps, nexus, one
Posted in General | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Though the Nexus One does not seem to be a best-seller, it seems it found its way into Linus Torvalds’ hands. You know, the “Finnish software engineer [who is] best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel and git revision control system” (Quote from wikipedia).
I already wrote some stuff about the Nexus One and even about unboxing my device. Now Linus has one too and guess what he wants to use it for? He didn’t get it for the phone function or messaging because that would be too distracting during work. Well, he is right. It seems his favorite is “Google Navigation”; perhaps I should check that out too, some day?
Image source: wikipedia.org
Tags: android, google, linus, linux, nexus, one, torvalds
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
I just read that article on the Android Developers Blog about Live Wallpapers.
The interesting fact in there – which many people might not know – are the possibilities what we developers can do with such live wallpapers. Just imagine you have a massive screen in the background of the phone desktop where you can do pretty much everything with. Kind of like a separate application, but the user will always see it behind his normal icons.
It is a very neat concept which you won’t find on the iPhone (afaik, you might want to correct me if I am wrong). Developers like you and me could show most recent stock info on there (check out Google Finance APIs), a list of the latest Google News or something else. You are only limited by your own imagination here. So hack attack and get freakin’ going! 
Tags: 2D, 3D, accelerometer, connection, gps, internet, live, network, OpenGL, wallpaper, wallpapers
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Monday, January 25th, 2010
Hi Android programming folks,
Perhaps you already read this notification on the Android Blog about the Android Developer Labs World Tour. Google’s Android team will go on a trip and tour the world and host developing sessions in quite some cities all over the world. So if you are interested to get direct info from the Android team and your hands on new hardware (probably the Nexus One) just register at the end of this article.
Share your Developer Labs Tour with us!
If you are participating in one of these sessions would you mind taking one or two photos and share them with us? I am sure, that there are quite some developers out here who are not living in one of the mentioned cities and cannot go to such sessions. I will be attending one at least will share my shots with you guys. So if you would like to share yours as well, check out the following short instructions on how to let me know of your shots.
How to submit photos:
- Upload your photos to flickr or Picasa.
- Tag them with
www.androiddevelopment.org
I will then put them up here on the blog so everyone can take a look how your session looked like! 
Developer Labs World Tour Schedule
North America
- Austin, Texas – Feb 4
- Seattle, Washington – Feb 8
- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada – Feb 8
- Washington, D.C. – Feb 9
- Mountain View, California – Feb 10
- Cambridge, Massachusetts – Feb 11
- New York, New York – Feb 12
Europe
- London, UK – Feb 2
- Paris, France – Feb 8
- Berlin, Germany – Feb 10
- Zurich, Switzerland – Feb 13
- Madrid, Spain – Feb 13
Asia
- Singapore – Feb 28
- Taipei, Taiwan – March 3
- Hong Kong – March 4
Register for Developer Labs in your City!
Tags: , android, developer, flickr, hardware, java, labs, photo, picasa, tour, world
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
Like mentioned before, I ordered a Nexus One. Just 5 days after ordering the phone, it arrived here (in Hong Kong). The phone’s box looks kind of like an Apple product box. Plain white, not much written on there and a bit stylish. However, it doesn’t reach the Apple “stylishness”.
It still looks nice and delivery via DHL was no problem at all. I could track the package since it started shipping from the US. Google Checkout showed that the package was sent out from “Google Phone Webstore” and then the DHL tracking stepped in and everything was easy going. Anyway, I hope the phone is charged soon so I can start playing around with it
Here are some unboxing photos in chronological order:
As you can see, the phone comes with:
- Battery
- US Power Cord
- Micro-USB cable
- Phone bag with little Android
From the last picture you can see that there are three little contacts. Though there is no docking station delivered with the device I guess this is for a future docking station (probably provided by HTC or other accessories manufacturers).
Tags: battery, engraving, htc, images, nexus, one, photos, unboxing
Posted in General | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
IMHO, this is quite chic. I have to say that I am kind of surprised by the design. While the OS itself is pretty much the same on all devices; we distinguish Android phones more by their design and usability. Respectively, reviews say that the phone feels very fast – faster than all other Android phones on the market. Well, the huge processor must be there for something. But despite that the Nexus One just looks cool. I think I have to get one for “testing purposes” … No seriously, this is one of the pretty phones I have seen so far. Not just Android phones, I am talking about all smartphones you can compare the Nexus with. Well, the iPhone still looks great and I am actually loving the design of the new BlackBerry Bold 9700 as well.
The best thing is that you can get it unlocked without any SIM card limitation for just US$529 directly from Google. That is exactly what the developer community needs. A quasi standard phone for cheap which can be used for developing anywhere. They tried that already with the G1 for Developers but that didn’t work that well. For example, I was not able to order one because they could not ship to my country or whatever. Anyway, the Nexus One seems to be great and it will kick off the Android developer community as we get a great phone for less money!
Technical Specs
Power and battery
- Removable 1400 mAH battery
- Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger
- Talk time: Up to 10 hours on 2G; Up to 7 hours on 3G
- Standby time: Up to 290 hours on 2G; Up to 250 hours on 3G
- Internet use: Up to 5 hours on 3G; Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi
- Video playback: Up to 7 hours
- Audio playback: Up to 20 hours
Processor
Operating system
- Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 (Eclair)
Capacity
- 512MB Flash
- 512MB RAM
- 4GB Micro SD Card (Expandable to 32 GB)
Location
- Assisted global positioning system (AGPS) receiver
- Cell tower and Wi-Fi positioning
- Digital compass
- Accelerometer
Size and weight
- Height: 119mm
- Width: 59.8mm
- Depth: 11.5mm
- Weight: 130 grams w/battery; 100g w/o battery
Display
- 3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen WVGA AMOLED touchscreen
- 800 x 480 pixels
- 100,000:1 typical contrast ratio
- 1ms typical response rate
Camera & Flash
- 5 megapixels
- Autofocus from 6cm to infinity
- 2X digital zoom
- LED flash
- User can include location of photos from phone’s AGPS receiver
- Video captured at 720×480 pixels at 20 frames per second or higher, depending on lighting conditions
Cellular & Wireless
- UMTS Band 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900)
- HSDPA 7.2Mbps
- HSUPA 2Mbps
- GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
- Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
- A2DP stereo Bluetooth
While the technical specs are interesting but not that astonishing let’s take a closer look to the supported formats:
Image
- JPEG (encode and decode), GIF, PNG, BMP
Video
- H.263 (encode and decode) MPEG-4 SP (encode and decode) H.264 AVC (decode)
Audio encoders
- AMR-NB 4.75 to 12.2 kbps sampled @ 8kHz
Audio decoders
- AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1 (AAC+), HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+) Mono/Stereo standard bit rates up to 160 kbps and sampling rates from 8 to 48kHz, AMR-NB 4.75 to 12.2 kbps sampled @ 8kHz, AMR-WB 9 rates from 6.60 kbit/s to 23.85 kbit/s sampled @ 16kHz., MP3 Mono/Stereo 8-320Kbps constant (CBR) or variable bit-rate (VBR), MIDI SMF (Type 0 and 1), DLS Version 1 and 2, XMF/Mobile XMF, RTTTL/RTX, OTA, iMelody, Ogg Vorbis, WAVE (8-bit and 16-bit PCM)
Well, not much new in here too as those formats are supported by Android already. Still, I like the phone though. Well done Google!
More about the Google Nexus One:
Tags: android, google, internet, nexus, one, order, phone
Posted in General | 8 Comments »
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
I just read that Google plans to sell its own Android phone in two versions:
- Branded T-Mobile version with contract.
- Unbranded version.
This brought up some memories on how BlackBerry devices are distributed. For those of you who don’t know: BlackBerry devices from Canada’s biggest and S&P 500’s fastest growing company Research In Motion are only available through Wireless Network Carriers; mostly branded. It is impossible to get such devices without branding (unless you are a BlackBerry Alliance partner and get an internal device for testing).
For Google it is a good move to have their device at network carrier’s shelfs because that is where customers get their phones mostly. I guess the mainstream user (not you and me) doesn’t really care much about what phone it is and who made. The phone user’s decision is usually based on
- Good deal with the carrier.
- Phone’s capabilities.
- Phone’s look.
- Phone’s reputation.
Obviously user’s of Apple’s iPhone have their preferences sorted differently. Well, the above sorting is mine, and I have to say: even though the iPhone looks cool and is supposed to be “hip”; and the Android phones are kind of geeky (from a technological point of view); I am still using a BlackBerry as my main device. In fact, as I am on the road right now, I am using two!
People now might say: “Why the f*** is that? You are running an Android blog man!” Well, I have to say: Android is not there where I would like to see it at – yet. I really like the Android approach of Android OS and I truly believe it will have a bright future for all of us, but there is still some way to go. The gap to Google’s competitors gets closer and closer but it is still there. Fortunately, our business is such a fast growing one that our world order could be upside down next year.
I am really excited about the mobile future; this includes but is not limited to Android. What devices are you using?
More about this on Two Google Phones Coming in January? (Reuters via internetnews.com)
Tags: android, BlackBerry, google, phone, t-mobile, usa
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 16th, 2009
The fact wrap-up of the brand new LG GW620 phone running Android:
- Keyboard: Qwerty
- Display: 3 inch Touchscreen (320 × 480 Pixel, 18 Bit)
- EDGE, UMTS, HSPA (7,2 / 2.0 MBit/s) and WLAN (802.11b/g)
- Quadband-GSM
- 5-Megapixel-Camera (Videos in 320 × 240 Pixel)
- Internal Memory: 166 MByte
- MicroSD-Slot (up to 32 GByte)
- Weight: 142 g
- Dimensions: 109 mm × 55 mm × 16 mm (2 mm thicker than Motorola Milestone)
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Monday, November 2nd, 2009
… how gay is that?
Remember my previous article about the Motorola Droid? Well, back then I already thought that name was questionable as it comes around a bit cheesy – especially when the device is running Android on there. It is kind of like calling a BlackBerry weather app “BBWeather”. But “Milestone”? Come on Motorola … you are a US company and US companies usually put shit loads of money into branding and marketing of products. If feels like they are cutting costs and try to save money on that front. Then a clever manager dude came along and named the phone “Milestone” because it will be the next big milestone for Motorola to get back on the profit making track.
That might be understandable, but then that question comes up: Why do you use that name just for Germany? Because lots of Germans don’t speak that well? Indeed … we they even call a cell phone “Handy”. Back to our topic. “Milestone” is not such of a common name in Germany that people would recognize it better than “Droid”. Some naming decisions are really funny.
Perhaps some readers from Motorola can shed some light in here
Website: Motorola Milestone
P.S.: Sorry for the expression at the top. No offense my gay friends – I like you too. It is just not my thing
Tags: android, droid, germany, handy, milestone, mobile, motorola, phone
Posted in General | 5 Comments »
