Be Excellent To Each Other

...Or maybe not:Given the cooling commercial relationship between Apple and Google, I can understand that Google is conflicted about porting this desirable app to iPhone OS; it's a tactical win (as it'll ultimately feature some revenue-generating advertisting I expect) but a strategic loss (as it removes a competitive advantage of Android over iPhone OS). I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't port it after all.

Just a word of warning for anyone thinking of doing a factory reset on their G1. When it says it won't touch your sd card and will leave files like music and pictures intact, what it actually means is it will fuck up your sd card so you have to reformat it.

That happened to me with my N95, but the card could still be read by a PC and a card reader, so I copied all the stuff off first, then put it back.

I couldn't find anything else that would read it though, so I gave up. I should've known better really, but I've not lost much.

After a bit of testing, Google Navigation seems to be quite sexy, and even managed to copy with a few route changes (which I expected to mess it up as it frantically tried to download maps for the new route), although it did manage to flatten my battery completely in about 2 hours even though my phone was plugged in (I think that's more to my phone being a bit wonky than Navigation somehow using an immense amount of battery power).

In other news, I might try rooting my phone later on tonight, because knackering it once in one week is apparently not enough.

Expect an exciting report, or possibly a post of sobbing, later.

Well, I've done it. I think.
Just trying to work out what's new and exciting...

The Register has a Top 10 Android games article up, but it seems a rather uninspiring collection (Connect 4? No ta).

That's a bollocks top ten although the games on it are good examples of their type. My picks:

Abduction! - It's that tilt left/right as the thing bounces upwards from platform to platform, extra points for the avatar being an cow.

Andtangle - nodes connect lines, move nodes to uncross lines. Better than it has any right to be.

Bonsai Blast - Actionloop

Geo Seige - Geometry Wars 0.5

Gem Miner - platform boulderdashy old dude wiht pickaxe thing. Not sure but seems quite deep.

Kamyran's Eye - Rougelike, playable on touchscreen unlike all the others.

Replica Island - Lush platformer

Space STG - Erm, space strategy? Reminds me a bit of Deuteros but not played it much yet

SpecTrek light - Augmented Reality Ghost Hunting.

SpeedX 3D tilt racer, very good indeed.

/edit thing is though it's not really a games machine in the same way my Gameboy, GABSP, BGMicro, DS, DSLite and PSP are, so I'm not arsed if it doesn't have Chinatown Wars. I'd love Dungeon Master or something though.

their list is cack.

my faves;

Retro Defense - better than Robo as Robo is more about the grind in the end. You get rewarded for failing and eventually sheer repetition and upgrading will beat the whole game. Retro requires more thought.

Trap - like Qix but different (lines go out from a central point rather than being drawn). Plays great and is just as risk v rewardy as Qix.

Drop7 - a bit bland looking but a great puzzler.

Dope Wars - like the DOS version but with an okay interface and global leaderboards.

Doodle Jump - platform sort of thing with decent tilt controls.

Blow Up - a 2D Bomber Hehhe!

Looks like 2.2. is going to have an auto update all function, and apps can run of SD.

They reckon that the just-in-time compiler will speed up apps from 2 - 5 times on the same hardware.

Edit: Nice, OTA installs from PC. You can find an app on the marketplace on your PC, click on it, and it will auto download and install on your phone.

Edit2: Oh my, they have got a piece of software for your PC that will stream all of your music on your PC to your phone. That's pretty nice.

Auto-update and update all, finally. Love the look of that 'push to phone' stuff, too.

Oh, hello The Future.

Until someone dies because a driver is concentrating on the AR display instead of the road ahead...

I'm looking to get an HTC Desire in July when I can upgrade but Grim... has just reminded me that since I'm on Orange, it'll come full of crap Orange software.

This could be a deal breaker!

I did debrand my N95 ages ago and the current phone I have was won as a handset only. I don't think I'd like to go back to seeing Orange everywhere!

I wonder there'll ever be an Android pad of some description.

RE: Getting 2.2 on recent HTC phones. Including Desire and Legend.

"We expect to release all updates in the second half of this year but can't be more specific yet"

I wish Voda would upgrade my Magic to Android 2.0

Well, that's the whole point - if he's looking at the AR nav and a child steps into the road, he'll see the child on the AR nav.


Assuming you mean a tablet, there's already a few. This is one of the better ones, apparently.

Dell are making one too.

Although speaking of pads, I like that you can use a Wiimote with an android phone. I can see myself loading up a few emulators and taking a Wiimote with me on long journeys.

Wireless tethering and running apps from the sd card removes a few reasons for rooting.

Right, so about a week ago I decided to root my G1 and see exactly what benefits I could get out of it. Since then, I've spent far too much time messing around with, breaking and fixing my phone.

I chickened out at first and decided to install a rooted version of the 1.6 update, which was very nice and included apps2SD and wireless tethering. Even though I'm still using the card that came with the phone, I didn't notice any problems with loading apps and there seemed to be an improvement in performance. Unfortunately, I never really got round to testing out the battery life, as I spent a couple of days messing around before deciding I should see what CyanogenMod was all about.

To be honest, it didn't seem that much different. It was a bit more effort to get set up than the standard rom, but after actually using it for a few days there definitely seemed to be an improvement in battery life, but wait, what's this? Android 2.1 on my G1?

Well, I've only just installed it, so I don't really have much to say at the moment, but it seems to work...

I hope the change the interface a bit, it's currently possible to drive most places in the time it takes you to enter an address (street, city and post code are all required ) and bring up the route.
Apparently they took it offline earlier because the servers were getting hammered, so that might be why it's a bit slow. I haven't actually used it to drive anywhere so I can't really say much else.

Just a heads-up: I changed my email address suffix from googlemail to gmail just before the weekend since the google roll out for us poor little @googlemail.com users got round to me. I didn't consider it would affect anything on my phone but ooooooooooh no, was I ever wrong!?! Only just sussed this was the reason this afternoon after my phone has been in meltdown all weekend. Contacts not syncing; not being notified of new emails; unable to update market apps; battery draining away like a mofo. It's all being going wonky, but I just reset my phone and told it my email address with the new @gmail.com suffix and it's all happy again now.

Nice one, Google...

That's odd, as your @googlemail address should still work.

Yep, I didn't even consider that it'd mess my phone up, but oh boy was I wrong! Now that the phone knows that I'm @gmail.com everything is working fine again! Stupid thing.

I must confess that mine's been fine (touches wood).

I'm on Android 1.6 on my Magic. Also it's the Vodafone fiddled with version, maybe that's the reason? The weirdest thing that happened was the battery drain; before Thursday I was getting about 2 days on a charge but over the weekend it hasn't managed to last more than 10 hours without running empty!? Hopefully that's fixed now as it was REALLY pissing me off!

I read something about this... something to do with gmail.com being only just available for UK users (due to copyright of the GMail name), so we were all hardcoded somewhere to googlemail.com addresses.

The only problem was supposed to be with Google talk, everything else should've been fine. Seeing as I've been messing around with my phone I decided to recreate my account as the gmail one and now everything seems fine.
However, google chat on my laptop refuses to sign in since the change...

Put 2.1 on my T-Mobile Pulse over the weekend (had been on 1.5), was staggered by how it appears to have improved battery life by about 40% - I can only assume it's lots of clever optimisation stuff.

Was battery life really that bad ? I've recently got a HTC desire and the battery life ain't that great, the internet tends to cane it.

I was having to charge it every other night, but now I'm getting a third day of relatively heavy use (texts, calls and 3G internet use) with the battery life still not dangerously low.

If you're still wanting to do that, go to a Carphone Warehouse. Almost all their handsets are unlocked and don't have any of the individual networks stuff on them, you can take them on an Orange contract and immediatly put a T-Mobile sim in for example. They will do an Orange upgrade for you so you retain your mobile number and plan and everything but you will skip the annoying Orange software bit.

That does sound very helpful thanks Gilly but I've since spoken to a friend who works at Orange. Believe it or not, but he doesn't actually know that much about phone but he assures me that the HTC Desire doesn't come preloaded with rubbish.

I'll see if he's right before buying one though!

I got my desire for the carphone warehouse and there wasn't much loaded onto it, bar the bare essentials.

That just reads as all kinds of dirty. What a difference a single misspelled word can make!

My contract is up soon-ish, so I've been window shopping for a new Android phone. I think my options at the moment seem to be the Sony Ericsson X10, but I think I'd like to have a play with one of those before I get one, or the HTC Desire, but I'm not sure either of them convince me that I want to commit to owning one for the next 18-24 months. Part of me is tempted to hold onto my G1 for a few more months and see if there's anything else on the horizon.
Anyone got any recommendations?

Which word is misspelled?

For/from.

I ordered an HTC desire today (£15 a month with unlimited interwebs!), cos I was fed up of people mocking my extremely old phone. But those who mocked my phone only have series 1 iPhones. Look who's laughing now!

Well, still them cos it hasn't been delivered yet...

Bloody hell. I re-read that again and again looking for it. I think I automatically parse a lot of stuff as correct due to being a scan reader.

Ooh, where from?

Carphone Warehouse, contract with T-Mobile.
The same deal isn't available direct through T-Mobiles website, which is kind of odd.

It's a bonus £220 for the handset, but it still works out cheaper than the £25//£30 for 24 months that most of the other contracts seem to ask for and tbh, I would be lucky to use 30 minutes or texts in a month, so quite what I would do with the gazillion free minutes & video texts or whatever they offer to justify the exorbitant price...

Hmm, well I'm on T-Mobile now and they seem to have been pretty good, so I have been looking at sticking with them (although if the right phone is only available with someone else then I'd be happy to jump ship). The deals on their website are pretty awful compared to what Carphone Warehouse are offering, but I'm hoping I'll be able to negotiate some sort of upgrade deal when the time comes.

Chap in the office has a Desire. It's a fucking awesome phone - I'm upgrading next month, and I'm only put off by the lack of real keyboard.
There is another one coming (from Samsung) called the Galaxy Pro - that has a keyboard, but I think that might be a while off.

My mate has the Desire, I will be playing with it at weekend... I think i will wait till i am out of contract in Feb

The Galaxy S (not the pro) looks nice, but I didn't really have a proper look last night. I've been weaning myself off the physical keyboard on the G1 because I've pretty much resigned myself to not having one on my next phone (or I don't really want it to be a deciding factor). Have you tried Swype? It's awesome once you get used to it.

Yup. It annoys me by not putting a space after punctuation, but it's otherwise rather nice.

It's not even close to being as good as the physical keyboard, though.