These Nexus ‘Droids Are Good For Us
Posted January 6th, 2010 by Howard TaylerLast August I got an iPhone, mostly to see what the big deal was. I’m pretty sure I figured it out, and I’m still loving the device. It’s long since moved from “my new toy” to “how did I get by without this thing?”
But I’m not an Apple fanboy, and I can quickly point at things I don’t like about the iPhone. This is why I think it’s fantastic news when I see Google’s recent announcement that they’re putting out their own smartphone as a flagship for their Android OS.
Is it an “iPhone killer?” No, of course not. It’s another entry in a competitive marketplace, and it makes a really, really compelling case for itself. This is wonderful news for iPhone users because it dials up the pressure on Apple to improve the shortcomings of the current iPhones.
It’s also good news because it let me tell a joke for the Schlock Mercenary iPhone App subscribers. I try to do at least one of these a week. Once I’ve got a larger stable of images I may start doing them more often.
(Note: this post is in no way to be construed as an announcement, nor even a HINT at future direction for Schlock mobile apps. Right now my development partners and I are standing back and watching the market.)
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January 6th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
*snirk* Okay, now you have to get that up so it’s front and center as people enter the iPhone Apps ’store’.
Hey, you never know. Apple my hire Tagon for the job. ;)
Then you get with Blind Ferret having Tagon and the Toughs giving the Apple engineers and programmers a motivational speech that would make Knute Rockne proud! … Okay, make John “Bluto” Blutarsky proud!! ;)
January 6th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
‘Right now my development partners and I are standing back and watching the market’.
You mean the wife?
Google or Apple though… Thats like choosing between Darth Vader or Saruman…
January 6th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
@Gonadius The Schlock app was coded by Plus 14 Ltd., not by Sandra. :-)
January 6th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Yes, so how much funner is it to sit back and watch the carnage ensue.
For me though, my money is on Darth Vader. Oh yea, big woop, you’ve got a ring, how is that going to stand up to a fleet of super star destroyers.
January 6th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
As a Droid owner (who also has an iPod, and bought the Schlock app), I’d like to say: I hope you decide to make an Android Schlock app. I’d buy it. I’ve started to like the android interface more than the iPod in a few ways. And my phone is with me more than my iPod now. ;)
January 6th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
‘Right now my development partners and I are standing back and watching the market’.
I read that as ‘development pandas’ and had a marvelous image of Howard and several pandas in business suits standing on Wall Street, looking thoughtful.
January 7th, 2010 at 12:57 am
“Bamboo futures are up!”
January 7th, 2010 at 2:05 am
I’ve been wanting to say this for a while “These are the droids you’re looking for.”
January 7th, 2010 at 2:07 am
hmm….marketing pandas….the obenn….coincidence?
January 7th, 2010 at 2:56 am
“Right now my development partners and I are standing back and watching the market.”
Can I sit down? My feet are getting sore. :-)
You know, I’d probably be willing to write an app for Android if someone was willing to donate me a phone to test with, but so far the market just isn’t big enough to be worth my while investing the money to buy a phone myself.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:05 am
Ugh, I’m getting annoyed seeing the ‘okina-where-there-should-be-an-apostrophe in the title of every comment in the feed. Gotta watch out for those ’smart quotes’.
Gonadius: If Google and Apple are Darth Vader and Saruman, what are Microsoft and Sony?
January 7th, 2010 at 6:07 am
Punch and Judy.
January 7th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
So wait, does this mean you are developing for the android now!?!?
;-P
January 7th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
They are waiting and seeing. Which is sure to make those of us not enslaved by Steve Jobs completely manic.
January 8th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Ah. Next week will we be introducing a special character for a VIP-Escort mission, conveniently from a planet that speaks Galstandard West but doesn’t believe in having two alphabets (upper and lower case) whose name is “iphone”?
(it’s pronounced “if-oh-ney”)
January 8th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Long ago, I did a color study for Mitsubishi A6Ms and Aichi D3As in
Kreigsmarine camo — tho’ it wasn’t so much for “the Germans bomb
Pearl Harbor” as “the Germans get a heads-up on Naval Air from
people who know what they’re doing”; however, Bluto’s infamous
speech was involved.
I mention this as I do not have a cell phone of any kind, much less a
Droid [TM - Lucasfilm] or iPhone, and save for the _Animal House_
ref upthread I would be entirely disengaged from this discussion.
This concludes this almost-entirely-off-topic ramble — we now return
you to your regularly-scheduled BLAM. :)
January 9th, 2010 at 12:35 am
The Register has been making some snarky coverage about Google’s newest smartphone. The newest article in the series, as of this time in the apparent temporal continuum, is here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/08/google_nexus_partner_friendly/ — titled, with convenient asterisk, and brazen ponch, to boot, “Google to mobile industry: ‘F*ck you very much!’”
Now, to criticize some of the content of that article, in stating my own case about the Google Nexus phone: I’d like to think that Google’s newest addition to the mobile phone market would serve to stir-up some good competition. I’d also like to think that it’s just some whining, if competitors to the Google Nexus phone feel intimidated by the really big stick that Google might be seen to be wielding, as far as the level of popular support behind the Google franchise. Google built that goodwill, somehow. If Motrolla, Apple, Nokia, et al have not developed a similarly cogent sense of goodwill, within their respective customer bases, that’s not my fault, I notice, and it’s not Google’s.
Still, I think I’ll stick with my BlackBerry – even if I could afford a fancy phone upgrade, on my salary ;)
I’ve read some criticisms about the functionality of the apps available on the Android platform. I trust that the BlackBerry platform offers a lot more functionality, in the professional-quality applications that are available, respectively, on the BlackBerry platform, and through service providers such as BlackBerry App World.
And still, I think Google’s in the right, with their mobile phone offering, and I think I can appreciate if it presents the other mobile platform manufacturers with some much-needed evolutionary incentive.
January 9th, 2010 at 11:29 am
I just wanted to say, I like “emmpa.”
January 10th, 2010 at 1:56 am
@tarlen, there’s an Android SDK which includes an emulator so you don’t need a phone running Android.
I’d love to have a Motorola Droid. The 480×854 screen pwns all other phones. ;) iPhone is still using 320×480, the same as ye olde Palm T|X and LifeDrive and many other PDAs and phones.
Right now, Android is the most open phone OS. The others require one or more of these to approve all apps. The phone manufacturer, the OS provider or the wireless service provider.
Phones running BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, a JAVA inspired OS) are the most restrictive. The SDK is not free and both Qualcomm AND the service provider have to approve all apps, which also costs the developer money. They also require all BREW apps to be DRM locked to a single device when purchased and downloaded. Thus it’s impossible to write a freeware BREW app. Thus there’s not a huge number of apps for BREW and what there is, is mostly horrible.
January 10th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
@bizzybody I have the SDK, though I admit I haven’t used it yet. However, since the simulator uses the desktop hardware (CPU mainly), it has a tendency to run things a LOT faster than any phone would.
Certainly Apple say you can’t develop on the simulator alone, and I have had many instances in my development when something that worked really well on the simulator turned out to be really slow on a real device.
The Schlock app is the perfect example: the archive meta-data is downloaded in an XML format. Parsing this XML (books, chapters & strips, over 12,000 nodes all up) took about 2 seconds in the simulator. Acceptable since it only happens once.
On my 3GS it took about 35 seconds, and on a first gen iPod Touch it took about 90 seconds. I obviously came up with an alternative solution, but I wouldn’t have even known about the problem if I didn’t test it on an actual iPhone.
January 12th, 2010 at 5:45 am
Hmmm, sounds like Apple’s people need to fix their simulator with a throttle function to limit its execution speed to that of any of the iPhone and iPod Touch models the programmer selects.
Arcade and game console and classic computer emulator authors have been doing that for well over a decade, why can’t Apple, eh?
In other words, it needs an accurate emulation of whatever the iDevice or Android platform uses for a clock or timer.
I dunno if the Palm emulator did that or if the one PC I ran it on a while back was just that slow. It seemed to run at pretty much the same speed as my real Visor Platinum, with the emulator using the Visor ROM.
January 12th, 2010 at 5:58 am
As for Google’s own phone, sure, it’ll work on most GSM networks, but it’ll only use G3 on T-Mobile. For AT&T and others it’s limited to G2 or slower.
What I want to see is CDMA carriers in the USA adopt the R-UIM, which is the CDMA version of the GSM SIM card. “Why do you need that? You can just call Sprint or Verizon and switch phones whenever you want.” What if ‘whenever I want’ is every day or even more than once a day? There are people with GSM phones who take a simple ‘beater’ phone to work then pop the SIM from that phone to their fancy phone when they punch out at 5 PM – every – single – day.
North American CDMA carriers for some reason refuse to allow their customers that freedom.
There are phones across the pond with three and even four card slots so one may stick in 2 or 3 SIM cards and one R-UIM then switch amongst them at will as one travels.
Ever see a phone with a six speaker stereo system, three card slots, a bigger than iPhone LCD and a broadcast TV tuner?* The Asians and Europeans get to have such cool stuff while North Americans don’t.
*Made by Kisen. I want! (That is if they make it with an ATSC compatible tuner.)
January 12th, 2010 at 9:34 am
@bizzybody
If you’re thinking about Motorola Droid (aka Milestone in Europe), you should also take a look at the Nokia N900.
Sorry about the lack of detail, my more detailed post seems to be getting spam trapped.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:46 am
wish list for a phone (a guy can dream):
1)milspec durability (including immersion)
2)runs an open OS, either Android or linux I guess
3)good large touch screen (probably incompatible with 1, above)
4)not locked to any one carrier, but usable by all (yeah, right, and give up their monopoly?) with swappable transcievers so I can choose GSM or CDMA at will.
5)oh, yeah, and it would have to fit comfortably in a pocket and weigh less than a pound.
Hey, a guy can dream.
January 12th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
@bryan314
The N900 response
1) ziploc bag and phone rubber. Screen may occasionally be obscured
2) Linux – Maemo. Check.
3) Ummm, no. Smaller than previous version N810. Consider carrying the N900 -> TV cable, if physical screen size is important?
4) Done for carriers. As far as the CDMA compatibility, go with the world standard and stop subsidizing this weird radio format…
5) Done. 181 grams, plus ruggedization weight. Enough left over for at least 4 extra batteries, probably 10-15…
:-)
January 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am
DO NOT TRUST ziploc bags to protect your phone from immersion. This is like trusting the town drunk with your 100 year old bottle of scotch. For a while it’ll work, but eventually he’ll stop resisting and you’ll be sans a bottle of scotch.
I lost a very nice cell phone to the “baggies are waterproof” concept. They’re only waterproof till they develop a pinhole or they don’t get closed all the way, then they serve to hold the water next to the phone.
I now use a ziploc inside of a drybox (guaranteed not to leak and it floats) inside of a drybag and I still kinda wish I had water resistance in case of condensation (put the phone in the box on a warm humid afternoon, decide to make a phone call in the cold morning and find that you probably should have made other arrangements.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:15 am
@bryan314 – re: condensation. That is an annoying problem. I’ve had it happen with watches, without ever taking them underwater. It’s the “waterproof” seal that actually traps moisture inside. Don’t know what the deal is with cellphones, but the ones I’ve had are not waterproof in any sense. Never had any condensation problems, either, and I’ve taken them from Utah to Georgia and Illinois and Massachusetts and back.
Suggest using those silicate drying packs if you want to mess with baggies and dryboxes, but since phones aren’t really waterproof that may not be necessary.
January 16th, 2010 at 1:00 am
@hmoulding — The condensation problems happen when you take the non-waterproof phone and put it in a waterproof enclosure because of the water in the environment (non-expert kayaking, friendly curvy rivers, power washing of the cockpit when you find yourself with your deck facing the current…well, you get the idea). Silicate drying packs might be an option if they’re cheap…even better if there’s a way to refresh them.
OR I could acquire a water resistant milspec phone….but that still doesn’t get me my smartphone.