About Mobility

Below are modified instructions for Android 1.5 update/install:

1. (Make sure the G1 is fully powered or connected to power)
2. For Android 1.5 Cupcake download the update from: http://android-dls.com/files/ota/signed-kila-ota-148830.de6a94ca.zip
3. Rename the downloaded file to “update.zip”
4. Connect your G1 to your PC; mount the device
5. Copy update.zip to your microSD card (the root directory)
6. Shutdown the G1
7. Start it again while holding down the Home key until you get a triangular caution icon next to a phone (this is after you see the normal G1 logo)
8. Press ALT-L; this will open a menu of options, one of which is install the contents of “update.zip”; press ALT-S to start the installation
9. Wait several minutes while the new firmware is installed; don’t touch / mess with the G1 — leave it alone!
10. You’ll eventually be asked to push the Home and Back keys again; Back is near Home — not the Delete key on the keyboard; this will restart your Android device
11. The firmware will be copied into ROM (this takes a couple of minutes or so)
12. Your G1 will reboot itself

Good luck!

Disclaimer: if your G1 explodes during the installation process, I’m not responsible!

ceo

P.S. Adapted from / via: MobileCrunch.

Android Widgets, which will be made available with the release of Android 1.5 (Cupcake) is a great addition to the platform; I’ve been waiting for such widget API for a while now.

Android Widgets is an example of Local widgets (as opposed to Web-based widgets). And because they are Local, you get the benefit of the (Android) platform to its fullest.

Android define their widgets or AppWidgets as miniature application views that can be embedded in other applications (e.g., the Home). These views are called "widgets" and you can publish one with an "AppWidget provider." An application component that is able to hold other widgets is called an "AppWidget host."

Below is a glimpse at Android Widgets (thanks to PhoneDog):

When Android widgets are used with the AppWidget framework, see Introducing home screen widgets and the AppWidget framework, developers can write “widgets” that can be dropped onto the home screen. (And with “home widgets” we are getting closer to something that I wrote some time ago - see the bit old but still very relevant piece titled The Next Battlefront for Mobile Applications.)

For those interested in developing widgets for Android, there are a couple of good developer guides available at developer.android.com:

• Widget Design Guidelines
• AppWidgets

Plus see my Mobile Widgets Page which provides some background, definition, examples and related information about mobile widgets.

ceo

The Android platform is an open platform, governed by the Open Handset Alliance (OHA). OHA has many members, and today it includes seven network operators and four handset manufacturers.

While the platform itself should be consistent across vendors/providers, thank God, I wonder what will be the differentiation challenges that handset manufacturers and network providers will face?

The handsets will all be capable of (from the S/W perspective) the same things, so will differentiation come purely from hardware design, for example, better handset footprint, layout, screen sizes, better battery consumption?

Or perhaps differentiation will come from the cost of ownership, as in monthly cost for voice/data/text plans?

Maybe it is all the above.

But I think a big part of this battle be in the User Interface. While the concepts of workspaces, and how S/W and UI is designed and written will or should remain consistent across platforms/vendors, we will see a plethora of UI designs and information architecture/organization. Is this a good thing? In theory it is, as it will allow for better and neater UIs and related innovation. I’m not sure yet the impact on the development and testing of Android applications… Also, will that UI innovation and differentiation make it back to the open source tree? Not sure yet, but I will find out soon, but my guess today, probably not.

Access to content and integration with the Web, which is based on applications and services, should be another differentiator. Integration to Google services have proven to be a winner, but Google services probably will be available to all Android platform vendors, providing no differentiation across Android vendors.

So differentiation between Android vendors will be a challenge, a challenge the iPhone doesn’t have, as there is only one iPhone vendor (and platform, unless you go across classes of iPods).

ceo

Call it 3G’s weakness, its Achilles’ heel, or 3G’s worst enemy….

==> Power consumption

Ironic it is, having a 3G device, but forcing it to 2.5G, to have a usable handset over time…

After a 1-day test running on EDGE vs. 3G/UMTS on my new Android G1, the battery did last much longer: the whole day and whole night…

The power consumption/management issue on Android really has to be addressed soon, as it makes 3G kind of impractical. In the meantime, if you’ve access to power sources, use it 3G, but if you are not sure, maybe because you on the road, force it to EDGE:

Go to “Settings” => Go to “Wireless Controls” => Go to “Mobile Networks” => Select “Use only 2G Networks”

I am hoping that very soon, we get a future Android S/W update that improves on power management so that we can use the handset on the 3G network without fear of ending up with a dead handset when we need it the most.

ceo

So I got an Android G1 handset. Cool. I’ve been using it for 2 3 days now. Overall I think it is a fine handset and mobile environment with great potential. Below are my quick first impressions: the good, the bad and the ugly; if you are looking for a full detailed review just search the web where you will find lots of review articles already.

The Good

• The software in general is pretty good and complete; you will find all you would expect from Google: email, SMS, contacts, browser, maps, plus the other stuff such as alarm, calculator and so on. The maps compass mode works well and is very cool.
• The user interface, colors, visual feedback, workspaces, and its fluidness is neat, I like it.
• The browser windows feature, which allows you to have multiple active browsing windows is neat.
• Great integration to/with rest of Google software: the email, the contacts, IM (GTalk), the calendar, the reader, YouTube. The integration is so good that I ended up moving all of my contacts to Google Contacts and have them synchronized with the handset. And I also consolidated all of my email accounts via Gmail so that I’ve a single place to go to check for emails, both on desktop and handset. I’ve been using this a lot; the integrated apps are really great. Many of these apps are Android/local apps which is fine with me as they run fast and have background processing, for example the Gmail client.
• Having touchscreen and keyboard is great; I always have been a touchscreen and keyboard kind of person.
• The handset comes with support for WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometer.
• I feel it is a great development platform, allowing me to experiment and create neat applications.
• There are many other goodies that I haven’t played with yet. And of course things like having a concurrent OS (Linux) with support for concurrent application execution, etc. is great.

The Bad

• The battery utilization is bad. And I don’t have GPS, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth active! Just idle, browsing, texting and reading email will eat your battery I would say in 5 hours or so. They need work on that.
• The keyboard feels a bit weird. I attribute this to its non-symmetrical design where you have to the right the trackball and buttons, taking maybe around 1 inch, but not having the same on the left-side. So while having a keyboard is great for me, the way it was implemented is not the best way. Symmetry is at the center of usability and beautiful design; it is a bummer they failed on this one. Over time with practice this may become a non-issue, but that is not the point; why fail to create a beautiful piece when you have the opportunity?
• I’m afraid that if I drop this baby that it won’t survive… Insure it!
• The hinge. This this is going to be a very weak spot for the handset. And it already started making (rubbing or friction) squeaky noises.

The Ugly

• Did I say the battery is bad? Well, the battery is worst than bad, and it is the true ugly part. This can be fixed with better software, better power management. Being the G1 the first Android model I understand they didn’t get it perfect, but the software and power management must be revisited (same happened with the first generation iPhone).

My Wishlist

• Better power management!
• The keyboard symmetry spacing issue mentioned above.
• A camera flash; check out the BlackBerry Curve as an example.
• S/W-based keyboard (already on the road-map) for when I don’t want to flip/open the handset to type.
• Infrared port.
• NFC.
• Headset Jack!
• (More as I find more wishes)

See the Android G1 handset specs (cellubration.com).

ceo

I’ve created a Google Group for Android Dev Austin.

If you are interested in Android you should register.

This list will be used for Android Dev Austin related news and events, including future AndroidDevCamp for Austin.

Here is the info:

• Group URL: http://groups.google.com/group/android-dev-austin
• Group email: android-dev-austin@googlegroups.com

Stay tuned…

ceo

Google Apps for Android, which includes YouTube, Search w/ suggestions, Mail, Calendar, Maps, Contacts and Talk, all seem very well implemented and very well integrated with the web and their corresponding web-based applications:

The Android platform is looking good…

ceo

Richard Monson-Haefel (author of a number of books in Java, Web Services and JMS) and who is a Sr. Analyst at the Burton Group, wrote a good piece on Andriod vs. fragmentation… I agree with most of his points.

Time will tell what will happen with Android and the industry, but it is not going to be straightforward. Unless there is a strong hand leading/managing, and yes controlling, “open and consistent” is like “water and oil”. And I am not even talking about network operators here who are the ones who decide what handets and what software runs on their networks; I am only referring to the implementation aspects such as APIs, behaviors, and so on.

ceo

Good writeup by James Pearce, CTO at dotMobi, on Google Android - as told and used by its own developers. I met James at the Mobile 2.0 event, and he is a sharp guy, so you should listen to him :-).

I will say though that Android handsets will come out probably in 6 months or so. And I will reiterate that at the end of the day, the operator still rules (it is their networks), and that all the theory (and wishful thinking) introduced by Android will be put to the test very shortly.

Android is definitely a shakeup to the mobile Java community (more than just “shaking things up a little”), but let’s remember that shakeups are a good thing (typically); more about this on another post.

ceo

Warning…Warning Will Robinson! The Android is out!

So the Android SDK is out… looks very interesting and well thought out.

Below is a video of Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz discussing the availability of the SDK and demo applications on the Android platform:

As I was suspecting, Android is Java-based, but it is not Java ME-based; the package structure is android.os . The Android web runtime is based on the open source Web Kit, a logical choice, and is the underlying OS is based on Linux 2.6 kernel.

General Features:

• Application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components
• Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices
• Integrated browser based on the open source WebKit engine
• Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGLES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional)
• SQLite for structured data storage
• Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
• GSM Telephony (hardware dependent)
• Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent)
• Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent)
• Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE

The Android Application framework seems quite interesting: see Android’s Application Building Blocks. A great summary of the architecture can be found at See Androidology - Architecture Overview, Part 1.

The Platform (click to enlarge):

Video: The Architecture Overview, Part 1:

Google has set aside $10M to give away to developers who come up w/ good applications for Android.

See Android’s page at Google at http://code.google.com/android/index.html.

Last but not least, let’s see how the “Hello Android” application looks like in Android:

public class HelloAndroid extends Activity {
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
        super.onCreate(icicle);
        TextView tv = new TextView(this);
        tv.setText("Hello, Android");
        setContentView(tv);
    }
}

Let the games begin!

Related to this see:

• Google Android - YAP
• The Next Big Thing in Mobile: Local Applications, and how the iPhone will, and how the OHA and Android can change perceptions.

ceo