last100 » Android

Video: Android 2.0’s cloud-savvy address book and more

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:28:51 +0000

The Google-led Android mobile OS continues its rapid development with version 2.0 nearing release. A 2.0 milestone is rarely insignificant and Android doesn’t disappoint. Perhaps the biggest enhancement isn’t an end user feature as such but a new API that will enable handset makers and other third-party developers to add additional ‘Cloud’ syncing capabilities to Android’s contact application, taking it far beyond the existing support for Google Contacts. This could be Facebook or any social network or web app and to the end user will feel very much like the contacts element of Palm’s Synergy feature, Motorola’s MotoBlur, the work that INQ have done or HTC Sense on the Hero and Tattoo, two existing Android-powered devices.

In other words, this whole cloud-savvy universal address book concept is already in wide circulation and now Google just made it even more pervasive.

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Adobe Flash seen running on Palm Pre – Netbooks, MIDs, and other smartphones also set to win (iPhone aside)

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:30:12 +0000

Adobe has long talked up its ambition to have Flash running on all manner of screens, not just the humble PC, and today the company got a lot closer to walking the walk not just talking.

Through the Open Screen Project, Adobe was already known to be working with smartphone platforms from Palm (WebOS), Nokia (Symbian) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile), along with a raft of content providers, chip makers and consumer electronics companies. Today, the company added Google and Research In Motion to the list, with relation to Android and Blackberry-powered smartphones respectively, leaving Apple’s iPhone as the odd one out regarding planned support for full Flash (or any Flash support at all).

Historically, Apple has always defended iPhone’s lack of Flash support by arguing that it’s too processor and power intensive, and that the cut down mobile version of Flash (Flash Lite) just isn’t up to the job. With Moore’s Law kicking in (faster smartphone processors) and Adobe working hard to optimize Flash for the latest mobile chips, this argument is holding less and less water. In the video demo below, we can see Flash performing pretty well on Palm’s Pre smartphone, a device that shares much under the hood with the latest iPhone 3GS.

Instead, as I’ve argued previously, Apple has a very different motive for keeping Adobe Flash away from the iPhone.

… as we all should know by now, the real reason why Apple doesn’t want to embrace Adobe’s Flash is that it would offer third-party developers an alternative “runtime” on which to develop and, perhaps more importantly, distribute apps for the iPhone, bypassing Apple’s control (and that of its partner carriers) and the iTunes App Store itself. And we can’t have that, can we?

The other big win for the Open Screen Project are the latest Netbooks and future MIDS (Mobile Internet Devices) or so-called smartbooks, reports Engadget. “Flash 10.1 will take advantage of GPU acceleration on a number of key mobile platforms, including both nVidia’s Tegra and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon alongside ION for smooth (well, theoretically smooth) 720p and 1080p video on the latest generation of netbooks and smartbooks.”

Where all of this leaves Microsoft’s own Flash competitor Silverlight on mobile is anybody’s guess, although probably not in the best of shape. While Nokia is partnering with Redmond to bring Silverlight support to Symbian, Microsoft itself is simultaneously supporting Flash for Windows Mobile, such is the anbundance of exciting Flash-powered content on the Web.

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First impressions of the HTC Hero (widgets, web browser, and social networking)

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:02:03 +0000

Yesterday I wrote a rant about a few of Android’s shortcomings but my faith in the Google-led OS has already been somewhat restored (not that it had waned completely). A few minutes after hitting publish, a helpful courier dropped off a review loan of the HTC Hero, courtesy of mobile carrier Orange. The Hero is the first Android-powered device to be heavily customized in terms of User Interface, with HTC’s Sense UI, something that we’re going to increasingly see handset makers do. Just last week, Motorola unveiled its own social networking-driven take on Android, and INQ, makers of the so-called ‘Facebook’ phone, have revealed plans to do the same.

But back to the Hero. A few notable improvements over the standard ‘out-of-the-box’ Android include…

Much better looking and more useful widgets

The widgets that HTC have developed have a familiar look to anyone who has ever used the company’s Touch Flo layer on its Windows Mobile devices, especially the weather and clock widgets. Graphically, they look really polished but there is also some genuinely useful functionality too. I particularly like the Twitter widget (and included app) that allows for updates to be viewed and published from one of the Hero’s revolving home screens. Other nice touches include quick toggle on-screen switches for WiFi and Bluetooth, and speed dial favorites that feature avatars pulled from Facebook, Gmail or your own locally stored contact photos.

An improved web browser with iPhone-esque pinch to zoom

I hadn’t picked up on this from the various reviews that I’ve read but the web browser in the HTC Hero has the same multi-touch gestures for zooming in and out of a page as the iPhone. An inverted pinch zooms in, while a pinching gesture zooms the page out. Best of all, a double tap on an area of text zooms right in and columns are re-flowed almost instantly to eliminate any horizontal scrolling (see video above). Again, just like the iPhone.

Social networking integration (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Google)

One of the most fun aspects of the Hero is the level of integration with third-party web services. When you first set up the phone it not only asks you for your Google account credentials so that it can set-up the Gmail client, pull in contacts and sync with Google Calendar (presuming you use all of these Google services) but it will also, optionally, ask you for your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr account details.

Facebook friends are then added to your address book and their latest status updates from the social networking site, where available, are then displayed in each contact field. (The Hero attempts to converge contacts across more than one service, with mixed success.) The Twitter widget is also ready to go, and any photos taken can be uploaded to Facebook or Flickr. The result is that the Hero is no less a Google Phone as it is a Facebook Phone or Twitter Phone, and so on.

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Three things that I hate about Android #fail

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:29:22 +0000

Let me preface this by saying that there is a lot to like about Android and that the smartphones being powered by the Google-led OS are going to get better and better. I’m especially excited by the UI customization that HTC and Motorola, for example, have been developing on top of Android, testament to the mobile OS’s overall potential and, of course, openness.

(I’m expecting a loan of the social networking savvy HTC Hero later today, thanks to UK carrier Orange. A full review of the Hero should follow shortly.)

However, having lived with the Vodafone HTC Magic for a few months now, there are a few things that really bug me about the standard version of Android. Yes, this is going to be a bit of rant.

1. Notifications and Gmail

Two areas where Android is supposed to excel: Background notifications and integration with Gmail. Firstly, I’m not a big fan of the notifications draw of Android as I find the “finger-friendly” target of the draw itself to be a bit fiddly to hit and drag open at times. And even though the draw is accessible no matter which app you currently have open or in view, dragging it down every time to view the full list of notifications or any meaningful info gets old really quick. That said, I can just about live with the notifications draw itself but the way Gmail alerts are implemented makes me want to throw my HTC Magic under a bus. Let explain.

I receive a new email and the email icon appears at the top of the screen.

Fine.

I click and drag open the notifications draw to read the first line of the email and who it’s from.

So far, so good.

I then click on the email, expecting to be taken to the Gmail app and to the full email itself, but instead I’m dropped into the Gmail in-box where I have to click on the same email again to read the full content. That’s right, the Google phone can’t do efficient Gmail notifications. The standard Android homescreen is also useless when it comes to email alerts, especially compared to my Nokia E71 or any standard Symbian S60 phone.

2. Third-party app updates

I’ve virtually given up updating the majority of my third-party apps that I’ve downloaded from the Android Market. That’s because every app update — these are very frequent, which is a good thing — involves at least two clicks for each app. First to initiate the update and second to, once again, give the app all of its required permissions. This is really tedious to do when you have lots of third-party apps installed.

In contrast, the iPhone and iPod touch gives the option to ‘update all’, a one-click procedure.

Of course, Apple has the advantage of vetting all apps in the App Store, presumably negating the need for the user to check the list of required permissions with each and every app update to see if they have been sneakily changed. But still, there must be a better way.

3. Android Market and Google Checkout

I haven’t bought a single third-party app for my Android phone. And believe me, I’ve tried. The reason is that the Android Market requires a Google Checkout account. Of course I have one of these but bizarrely it’s not accepted by Google’s mobile app store. When I signed up to Checkout, I used a non-standard Gmail address (instead, one powered by a “Google Apps for your domain” account), which works fine for all of my Checkout purchases elsewhere on the Web but not through the Android Market.

There you have it. Let me know your own Android gripes in the comments…

Image Credit: Notifications draw – Techradar.com

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Motorola just bet the house on Android and social networking

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:52:55 +0000

On stage live at GigaOm’s Mobilize 09 conference, Motorola just unveiled a large part of its comeback strategy (there seems to be a lot of “comebacks” in the handset market at the moment) based on a new smartphone powered by Android, the Google-led mobile OS, featuring a custom UI that puts social networking at its heart.

The phone, to be called the Motorola Cliq and offered exclusively on T-Mobile in the US, and the Motorola Dext in Europe, features 3G, WiFi, a 3.1 inch touch screen, slide-out landscape keyboard, and 5 megapixel camera, amongst its specs.

The big sell, however, is the new UI that Motorola has built on top of Android and an accompanying synchronization and backup service, both dubbed Motoblur. The combined offering “is the first and only solution to sync contacts, posts, messages, photos and much more—from sources such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail, work and personal e-mail, and LastFM—and automatically deliver it to the home screen”. Or so the company claims.

If that all sounds similar to the custom Android work that HTC have recently done with the HTC Hero or Palm’s Synergy, or to a lesser extent, Nokia’s home screen widget approach on the N97 or much of the overall philosophy behind handset upstart INQ, it’s because it is. While Motorola are probably onto something with Motoblur, so is much of the rest of the industry.

The social web, as I’ve argued many times before, is the killer app for mobile data. And Motorola just bet the house on it.

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Spotify hits the iPhone and Android app stores

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:57:32 +0000

The stars were already aligned: a preemptive PR strike, a premium business model, and regulators questioning anti-competitive practices with relation to the iPhone’s app store — making it less and less surprising that Apple should give Spotify the green light.

As of today, the iPhone version of the music streaming service is available for download from Apple’s official App Store — UK, Sweden, Spain, France, Norway and Finland only (with the U.S. debut planned for sometime next year) — while a mobile client for the Google-led Android has also launched. The app is free for either platform but you’ll need to be a Spotify premium subscriber — £10 per month in the UK — to access the service.

The key feature that sets Spotify apart from other music streaming services is the ability to play any track or album on-demand rather than at random within a particular genre or ‘artists similar to’. While the mobile version also one-ups its competitors by offering an off-line mode that caches play lists for when your phone is out of coverage or wireless is switched off. This means users can access the service while on the subway or a plane, for example, or utilize the feature to conserve battery life.

As I predicted, however, the iPhone version of Spotify has one major floor. Music can not be played in the background if a user switches applications. Not the fault of Spotify but a limitation imposed by Apple with relation to multitasking on the iPhone. Unsurprisingly, the Android version doesn’t suffer the same fate.

The is the first phase of Spotify’s ambitious mobile plans, with a version for Symbiam S60 (Nokia etc.) next, and a rumored tie-in with Hutchison Whampoa-owned carrier 3 and INQ Mobile, makers of the so-called Facebook and Twitter phones. The Really Mobile Project recently reported that Hutchison Whampoa “head honcho” Li Ka-shing has invested in Spotify and that INQ CEO Frank Meehan now sits on Spotify’s board.

Video demos of Spotify on iPhone and Andriod after the jump…

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SugarSync comes to Android phones (it’s very good)

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:05:22 +0000

SugarSync is my backup to the Cloud and sync service of choice (see How I replaced Apple’s MobileMe at half the price) and today the company added Android to its range of supported mobile phones. SugarSync was previously only available on iPhone, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.

As readers will know, I recently jumped on the Google Phone bandwagon with the purchase of a HTC Magic (also also known as the T-Mobile myTouch in the USA) and so it’s pretty good timing to see SugarSync pushed out for Android shortly thereafter, although I’m still waiting for a S60 (Nokia) compatible version.

SugarSync enables you to backup your files on the company’s secure servers as well as keep numerous PCs in sync (Mac and Windows) as well as upload and access files from a compatible handset. On Android SugarSync offers the following features:

Remote file access and browsing: Retrieve and view files from any computer in your SugarSync account.
Local file management: You can browse and upload files stored directly on the phone. Allows you to copy and paste files to other folders, create new folders, rename files and folders, etc.
On demand synchronization: Edit files directly on your phone (requires separate document editor application); SugarSync will detect file changes and prompt you to upload revisions back to the cloud and other computers.
Shared folders: Send files and folders (small or large) to anyone and collaborate on projects through Shared Folders.
Browse photos stored on your computers in large or small format and directly upload photos taken with your Android camera phone.

I took the Android version for a test drive earlier today and found it to work really well. I could access all of my backed up folders from my Macbook and, quite brilliantly, when you try to open a particular file you’re prompted to select which application on your Gphone should handle said file. For example, for an RTF text file I chose Android’s File Helper app and it just worked. One thing I was concious of was remembering to log out after using the app. With access to all of my Cloud storage, losing your phone would be that bit more serious.

Overall, SugarSync have done a really neat job and probably deserve to be placed on my current top ten Android apps list.

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Creative announces Android-based PMP platform, goes head to head with Apple’s iPod touch

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:36:49 +0000

This is pretty interesting on the surface but misses a trick.

Creative, who has its roots in MP3 players and other portable media devices, have announced an Android-based media player platform. I say platform because the company may never release a consumer-facing device itself, but instead is touting its own reference design, software development kit and media processor to OEMs and developers.

Hardware-wise, the device known as the Zii EGG (to be re-branded by those that bring it to market), has impressive media-centric specs that include:

High Definition 1080p Output
3.5” 320×480 (16 million colors) LCD
Capacitive 10-Point Multi-Gesture Touchscreen Display
SD card slot
3D Hardware Graphics Acceleration for OpenGL ES
32GB Internal Memory
256MB Mobile DDR RAM
X-Fi Audio Processing
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
GPS Receiver
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
3-axis Accelerometer
HD and VGA Dual Cameras

In all areas the Zii EGG matches or beats Apple’s iPod touch, the product it’s clearly designed to compete with. What’s interesting is that Creative have decided to do this with the help of OEMs rather than going it alone. The wounds inflicted on Creative during the MP3 player wars must still be sore. High-def output is a key selling point of the Zii EGG and iPod touch beater (for now) as is expandable storage, GPS and front and rear facing cameras (a feature thought to be in the next-gen iPod touch too).

Where Creative is missing a trick, aside from the decision to not go it alone, is that software will likely be the key differentiator on any Android-based PMP or Internet tablet or whatever. And so again it seems odd to leave this part of the user experience to third-parties (based on the video below). It’s almost as if Google is providing the generic OS/UI and Creative the generic hardware design (albeit one that is impressive).

Perhaps that’s the best way to look at it: Creative taking the heavy lifting out of building hardware, just as Google has done with building the OS. Either way, as a strategy on Creative’s part, it leaves me scratching my head.

(via CNet)

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Google vs Microsoft? Forget Chrome OS (for now) and keep your eye on Android and Win Mobile

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:57:29 +0000

Forget Chrome OS versus Windows (for now), there’s another Google / Microsoft battle taking place right in front of our eyes and Google’s winning. No, I’m not talking search. That war is over and Google was victorious a long time ago. I’m talking mobile. Android versus Windows Mobile to be precise, where Redmond is looking a little vulnerable to say the least.

Tech pundits like to talk endlessly about how Apple’s iPhone has shaken up the industry and that’s undeniable. But Android is a slow burner — don’t get fooled by the pig of a phone that was the T-Mobile G1 — the Google-led mobile OS is only now beginning to show its true potential. It’s not that consumers are flocking to Andriod — yet — it’s that handset makers right across the board are. And prior to Android, many of those handset makers were more than willing participants in Microsoft’s Windows Mobile eco-system. Less so now.

It’s been reported that HTC, the biggest manufacturer of Win Mobile devices, will by end of 2009 have moved 30% of its device lineup to Android, and by 2010 around half of new handsets released by the company will be powered by the Google-led OS. Part of the reason is that Android is free to license unlike Windows Mobile in which Microsoft gets a kick back for every phone sold. And part of the reason is the flexibility of the OS itself.

When I reviewed the HTC Touch Diamond, a flagship device at the time, I gave props to the company’s attempt at putting a more friendly consumer-oriented User Interface on top of the dated Windows Mobile but noted the limitations of this approach. Instead, I suggested that HTC would be better off looking for a new OS partner or building one of their own. Android was my recommended solution.

Almost a year on and it seems that the Google-led OS does indeed address the needs of HTC: A solid and free foundation on which the company can build on top to differentiate itself from the rest of the market through software and the User Experience.

Here’s what Horace Luke, the Chief Innovative Officer at HTC, told T3 upon unveiling the HTC Hero, its most customized Android device to date:

Android is very flexible. Windows Mobile was great with development tools, it can do lots of powerful things. But Android allows you to make changes from the top to the bottom layer.

There are three classes of Android phone: the first was the Google-branded phones, the G1 and Magic; the Hero is the first in the second category, in which we added our own customised UI, but we didn’t change everything because they did some great things, like push email, integrating Google Maps etc; and the third is the quick and dirty Chinese knockoffs that won’t work with Marketplace. They’re Linux phones, really…

The hardware is only a small part of the user experience, the UI brings it alive.

And it’s not just HTC that is seeing the potential of building a custom user interface on top of Android’s strong ‘out of the box’ foundations. Sony Ericsson is set to bring an Andriod-powered device to market under its previously Windows Mobile ‘Xperia’ brand, custom UI and all.

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10 best apps currently running on my Android phone (HTC Magic)

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:19:53 +0000

I’ve only owned an Android OS-based phone for a few weeks – the HTC Magic (see my review) – but even in this relatively short amount of time I’ve been hitting Google’s mobile app store, the Android Market, pretty hard in search for the best and most useful third party apps the platform has to offer. Overall, I’ve found that Android has a lot going for it in terms of third-party apps – the catalog is growing daily – but compared to the iPhone the apps themselves often lack polish and sometimes feel a bit unfinished. Having said that, there are in most cases, based on functionality alone, a comparable app on either platform. Here’s a list of the best 10 third-party apps (in no particular order) currently running on my HTC Magic.

iMeem Mobile

The Android client for Imeem (a music streaming service) is one the most polished apps on the platform. You may not be familiar with iMeem but it’s a great alternative to Pandora (which is blocked here in the UK) or Last.fm. Talking of the latter, it also offers a good Android app but I still prefer iMeem.

beebPlayer

Sadly, the BBC haven’t gotten around to releasing an official iPlayer app for Android (the broadcaster’s 7 day TV catch-up service) but an unofficial offering has stepped in to fill the void. It’s not quite as smooth an experience as official support would offer but it still works pretty well most of the time. As well as catch up TV (streaming only) you can also access live TV and radio on the same basis as the official site.

Movie Finder

Either via GPS or by manually entering a postcode (or zip), Movie Finder tells you what movies are playing at your local cinema. You can view either by movie theater or film to find out what’s showing and where, with full screen video trailers and other info from IMDB included.

Movies (Flixster)

If the movie info provided by Movie Finder isn’t enough or you want to delve into Cinema’s past, then the official Flixster client is a must. The app also offers a similar movie listings feature as Movie Finder, along with Rotten Tomato reviews, trailers and more.

StumbleVideo

The StumbleUpon video app for Android – StumbleVideo – is dead simple and replicates the functionality offered by the desktop or Wii-optimized browser versions. Random videos are displayed and you can give it a thumbs up or down after watching, and you can browse by category etc. It’s a great time waster and offers a really nice alternative to Android’s YouTube client if you’re looking for a more lean back experience.

Qik

The Qik client for Android enables you to stream a live video broadcast to the web using your phone’s built-in video camera. Alternatively, videos shot can be uploaded to Facebook, Twitter etc.

AccuWeather

Borring I know but every mobile phone needs a weather app and AccuWeather’s Android app is a decent one. Once again, weather forecasts can be displayed via GPS location or a manual search, up to five days ahead.

TubeStatus

This one is only relevant to Londoners: TubeStatus gives you the latest info on any interruptions to the UK capital city’s undrground (metro) service, including scheduled closers and maintenance to lines and stations.

Twidroid

Twidroid is a fairly decent Twitter client for Android, although I wish you could increase the font size. Lots of functionality, including @ replies, DMs, browsing of profiles, TwitPic uploads etc.

Podcasts

A much needed and pretty robust podcast client for Android. It provides a podcast directory, along with the ability to manually enter feed URLs. And of course, video podcasts look great on the HTC Magic’s 3.2 inch screen.

I’ve only scratched the surface here and would really appreciate comments suggesting other apps I should check out. Thanks!

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Review: HTC Magic (Google Ion, T-Mobile myTouch 3G)

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:24:08 +0000

It goes by many names. The HTC Magic on Vodafone here in the UK, Google Ion, when handed out as a freebie at the search giant’s developer conference, and the myTouch 3G on T-Mobile in the states. But, whichever way you slice it, the second Android-powered Google phone, manufactured by HTC, is an improvement over the original T-Mobile G1 in almost every way.

Where the original G1 is clunky, in part due to its death-trap of a slide-out keyboard – OK I exaggerate but only slightly – the HTC Magic is relatively slim with subtle curves and a much reduced “chin”, which is a universal complaint of the G1.

Of course, without a physical keyboard, the Magic has to compromise with an on-screen QWERTY – more on that below – but doesn’t do away with hardware keys altogether. There’s call start and end, as well as ‘home’, ’search’ (it is a “with Google” phone after all) and dedicated ‘menu’ and ‘back’ buttons. These, particularly the latter two, when combined with the clickable BlackBerry-style scroll ball means that, for the most part, the Magic can be operated one-handed. This is something that I struggle with on the iPhone and many other touch-screen only devices, and the slightly narrower width of the phone – due to its smaller 3.2 inch screen – also makes it more comfortable to hold in one hand and that bit more pocketable, although, admittedly, this is very subjective.

On the Magic’s touch screen itself, it’s a joy to use. Like the iPhone, it’s capacitive rather resistive, responding to the natural electrical charges emitted by a finger rather than using pressure to register a touch. It’s bright with vibrant colors and, despite being smaller, the screen resolution also matches the iPhone’s 480 x 320. One thing I noticed, however, is that the touchscreen doesn’t seem quite as responsive near the edges. Finger smudges also quickly become an issue but this is common with all touch screen (and even some non-touch screen) models.

A few immediate complaints hardware-wise: The 3.2 megapixel camera is very average – and that’s being generous – and HTC’s insistence on omitting a standard 3.5 inch headphone jack in place of its all-in-one USB port used for headphones, charging and data transfer, makes a mockery of the phone’s media playback ambitions (the included buds are lousy). There’s also very little on-board storage, and although Vodafone’s Magic offering does come with a 2GB microSD card, it wasn’t long before I replaced it with an 8GB one.

On the software-side, and this is increasingly the battleground for today’s smartphones-come-mini computers, the HTC Magic uses the latest “Cupcake” 1.5 version of Android, which introduces a number of UI improvements, new features (such as video recording) and of course that virtual keyboard.

Talking of which, it’s pretty good as far as on-screen keyboards go (I’m not generally a fan). The auto-suggestion feature works well, offering a number of suitable choices in a strip just above and haptic feedback (a slight vibration) can be optionally turned on. When the phone is in portrait mode the keyboard is pretty cramped, switching over to landscape naturally works a lot better.

As you’d expect from a part Google branded phone, integration with the search giant’s own PIM apps is seamless. Just enter your Gmail credentials, and email, calendar and contacts are synced over-the-air, including their avatars, which show up in the Magic’s address book and caller ID. It works just like Apple’s MobileMe but without the cost. Updates can be constantly pushed to the phone in the background or can be toggled on or off on a per-application basis.

There’s also a very robust and feature-rich version of Google Maps, including street view and the location-aware social network Latitude. Using the phone’s built-in compass you can also operate street view as if you are there, which is fun if a bit gimmicky.

Photos taken with the phone’s camera can be uploaded to Picasa and videos shot, to YouTube. There’s also a native client for the video sharing site, with the option to view in low or high quality. The former is designed to conserve bandwidth when on 3G, the latter more suited to WiFi. All very nice, all very Google.

Third-party apps are a bit of mixed bag. There’s tons of potential and the Android Market, Google’s own app store, is really easy to use and has certainly filled up since I first looked at the G1. Having said that, I challenged my iPhone touting friend to pick 10 of his most used third-party iPhone apps and I’d try and find an equivalent on the Magic. For the most part I succeeded – streaming radio, podcast client, Twitter, London Underground status, cinema times etc. – but the iPhone choices are many and a great deal more polished.

This reflects not only the success of Apple in attracting developers to the iPhone but also perhaps the different approaches the developer tools take themselves. Apple, I’m told, provides a lot more out-of-the-box help with UI / look and feel than Android does.

A few areas where the Magic definitely trumps the iPhone: The app store (Android Market) feels more open, so for example, there’s a BitTorrent remote control app that has the same functionality that got a similar app banned from the iPhone App Store. You can also bypass the store altogether and download apps from anywhere on the web if you’re willing to ignore the security warnings.

The Magic, when plugged into a computer can be put into USB mass storage mode so that the phone shows up as a USB hard drive for easy transfer both ways of music, photos, video or any other file type. In other words, you don’t need to be tethered to iTunes. Media playback is pretty much on-par with the iPhone in terms of file format support – sans DRM – and any MP4 video file I threw at it that had been formatted for iPhone/iPod just worked.

Sadly, though, you can’t transfer files via Bluetooth to a PC or other phone, one sign of Android’s immaturity as a mobile OS.

Multi-tasking and background notifications is another area were the Magic performs well, and prior to iPhone OS 3.0, definitely beats Cupertino’s best efforts. However, I’m not sure this is the case anymore. Although the iPhone’s ‘push’ solution is still a bit of a fudge for managing multitasking and notifications, judging by the Magic’s limited battery life – if background syncing is on for Google apps and third-party goodness, let alone home screen widgets that pull in data from the web – Apple could be right in limiting the way the iPhone handles its always-on connectivity.

I also think Android’s notification system is kind of inefficient. An icon appears at the top of the screen to indicate a new email, for example, but you still need to drag that draw open to view the first line and click on it to launch the phone’s Gmail app where you’re taken not to the full email message itself but to the in-box. Worse still, the Magic’s home screen doesn’t show the most recent emails either, even though there are numerous home screen widgets for almost everything else (weather, twitter etc.)

I’ve purposely left the best to last. The Magic’s Android web browser is closest to iPhone’s yet, although I haven’t tried the Palm Pre, which also gets favorable comparisons. Admittedly, there’s no multi-touch (pinch to zoom) or double tapping but the on-screen zoom in and out controls that appear when you move around the page work fine. You can also copy and paste links, save images, open multiple windows but, frankly, its the speed and quality of rendering and the fluidity when scrolling or moving around the page that impresses most.

Again, like the iPhone, Flash isn’t supported, although the included YouTube client and other available third-party video apps (StumbleUpon, iPlayer etc.) go someway in making up for this.

Bottom line: if you want a phone to surf the web on and can’t afford the expense of an iPhone, or are already overly reliant on Google apps (that’s me by the way), you won’t be disappointed with the HTC Magic.

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HTC unveils Android-powered Hero, apes Palm Pre’s Synergy

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:22:04 +0000

I knew it would happen, I’m just surprised it’s taken so long: Google’s Android has been given a major UI overhaul by a third-party handset maker.

At a press conference in London this morning, HTC unveiled it latest Android-based phone – dubbed “Hero” – but unlike the G1 and HTC Magic before it, the new handset has been given a major UI overhaul that the company is calling HTC Sense.

Like the “Synergy” feature of Palm’s WebOS, social networking – Facebook, Twitter etc. – is integrated at the heart of the phone in a people not service-centric way. View a contact on the phone’s address book and you’re presented not only with their contact details and latest text messages but also status updates from Facebook and their most recently published photos on various photo sharing sites.

HTC Hero's "HTC Sense" UI

And like Gmail, the Hero’s email client presents emails as threaded conversations.

Another example of deeper web-service integration is the phone’s photo gallery app that not only accesses pictures taken by and stored locally on the device but can also pull in images from third-party photo sharing sites.

Search also borrows a little from the iPhone’s and Palm Pre’s “Universal” approach, not only searching data on the phone itself but also Twitter and, presumably, Google or one of its competitors.

Predictably, home screen widgets also feature heavily. And once again, these can pull in local data – latest SMS messages, world clock etc. – or that from third-party web services, such as the latest status updates, weather etc. The best comparison in this area is Nokia’s newly released N97.

All in all, it not only looks like HTC have put their own stylistic stamp on the standard Android UI but that HTC Sense, debuting on the Hero, takes and builds on top of the best of recent innovations from Apple, Palm and Nokia.

How well this works in everyday use, we don’t yet know. With the Hero set to go on sale in Europe sometime next month, hopefully I’ll get my hands on a review unit soon.

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