All on Jelly Bean

Officially off stock firmware on all three Android devices at home.

The Toshiba Thrive is running a CyanogenMod 10 build (JellyBean) called Dastardly Dingo. The UI is a Go Launcher HD app.

Just as the warranty on the SII ran out, I rooted and upgraded the firmware to the latest JellyBean build. An AOKP JellyBean build.

The UI is a Nova Launcher, providing additional functionality to the stock launcher.

The final device, a Nexus one, is running Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread), limited only by it's hardware specs from upgrading to ICS or JellyBean.

The biggest difference, of course, is the really powerful Google Now application, that syncs itself across both the JellyBean devices. More details post on Now at some point later, but safe to say, one of the first, well polished, functional and useful personal assistants on today's phones.

Whew - all aboard on JellyBean.

Some Carat Juice

Finally, looks like there is a potential solution for the battery drain problems within the Android eco system. Carat is a research project that aims to detect energy bugs - app behavior that is consuming energy unnecessarily - using data collected from a community of mobile devices. It is an active research project, run out of Berkeley.

For the first week, the tool merely sits around, waiting for you to run it so it can report usage data back to the mother ship. And once you have enough samples sent back, the tool begins to give you personalized recommendations. My biggest recommendation was to kill the “Accuweather” weather widget. I did that and - presto - my battery use graphs seem to have gone flatter than usual.

The most interesting part is the approach taken by the team - not with an analysis of the API calls an application makes or their abuse of wakelocks etc. Instead it is statistical, based on a massive data mining effort of similar devices. Innovative and for the moment, seems effective.

Finally - ICS for Galaxy S2

AT&T had been hinting at the Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade to the Samsung galaxy SII for a while now. Last week it even went so far as releasing the update and then rolling it back after some customers were able to get it.

Looks like whatever kinks Samsung had in producing a custom version for the US market seems to have been taken care of and my phone is now running ICS. Here is a screenshot.

The upgrade process itself was smooth - took all of about five minutes once the backups and such were completed. The only nit-pick, was that you had to install Samsung Kies to actual do the update instead of doing it over the air (OTA). But considering this was a major version upgrade, I did appreciate the backup opportunity Kies presented.

First impressions - not that many actually. Because the version of ICS is a Samsung customized, AT&T pre-loaded version, it is not that different from the Gingerbread copy. But, just beneath the surface there are differences. The biggest being the smoothness with which the interface seems to be working. And of course the subtle UI elements, like in the settings menu. It seems like someone actually spent time thinking about the end user while putting these together.

More details later, but for now, screenshots of the upgrade itself.

Rooting Thrive ... Done!

Thanks to dalepl and his unbelievably awesome Universal Easy Flash Tool - I now have root on my Thrive.

The best part is the process to get there, it was as easy as

• Install the correct ADB drivers on your laptop (available within the same zip file from dalepl)
• Connect the Thrive to the laptop via USB mini and ensure it is connected to the charger at the same time.
• Run the batch file Universal_Easy_Flash_Tool.bat

Confirm the fact that you want to root the device...

And pick the correct ROM that you are currently on...

And after about 4 reboots of the device - you are done!

Thank you @dalepl and @TurnYourBackAndRun - honestly Toshiba should be paying you for keeping their devices relevant. Now to kick some pre-installed crud off the device.

The Cyanogen Mod

It has been about two years since we bought the Nexus One. Which is great timing for the two-year itch - that starts something like “Now that the phone is not under warranty, do you think we should ...”.

To add to the itch was a real problem - Nexus One's fatal flaw so to speak. The phone has a minuscule amount of memory on board - a paltry 512MB which not only included the entire Android installation, but other pre-installed crud disguised as system applications. This meant even after moving some of the applications to the SD card, we were forever playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to free up just enough disk space for the phone.

That is when I decided to replace the original firmware with CyanogenMod 7(CM7). And since this was a phone that was not going to be customized heavily - the reasons to modify were fairly light.

• Because I could
• So that I could uninstall the various system applications like the Amazon MP3 for instance
• So that I could get App2SD capability inbuilt
• Because I could

The process I followed was the official process prescribed in the wiki over at the CM site. Here are some notes to go with the instructions in the wiki, that I am not planning to leech over.

Backup

Always important to backup. Especially since the process of unlocking the bootloader will reset your device to factory settings.

I used GO SMS Pro to backup SMS. Which by the way, is a great replacement for the custom SMS app. Astro File Manager to backup all applications. Then connect the phone to a computer and copy over the entire SD card as well.

Unlocking the Bootloader

A couple of things to keep in mind while unlocking the bootloader - firstly the phone is going to reset to factory settings. Don't ever think that you will be able to keep it like-for-like. Secondly a by-product of the reset is that if you have had to enable the developer mode to access the SD card via USB, you will need to re-enable that.

Custom Recovery Image

While the wiki mentions this in passing, once you reboot this step is essentially undone. So moving from this step to the next must occur without a reboot. Which brings us to the second question - how does one then “boot into recovery”? The process varies by phone, but in the case of the Nexus One - briefly click the power button after installing the recovery image. This will refresh the options on screen giving you a recovery mode to boot into.

Flashing CyanogenMod

If you were following along, here is where you need a lot more preparation than the wiki lets you in on. In reality you are already in step 4 of this section by the time you are done with the previous section. So if you were planning on downloading the zip files at this point - tough luck. Maybe that is something you do when you backup? Or at least when you get the recovery images in, make sure you copy the CyanogenMod version you want to install onto the root of the SD card. Otherwise, you might have to re-boot into the factory fresh device to do that.

Restore from backups

Final bit of a heads-up. When you restore from backups using Astro File Manager, it has a tendency to restore all applications to the phone internal memory. So after the first few, the rest of them are going to fail. So you might have to restore them one-by-one, moving the big apps to SD along the way.

That is it, more than a week into the installation, and the phone is still going strong. A detailed view of CM is probably going to follow - but so far really good.

Android design standards - Finally!

Google just announced design standards for applications on Android. Having three different Android devices at home, I have first hand experience of the UI fragmentation on the platform. However, Google needs to go beyond Android for design unification. Google is broader than mobile, and having design consistency is going to be crucial for a standard user experience across all Google properties.

Consider the Gmail app, and in particular the menu item to “Report Spam”, for example. I use three different flavors of GMail, and the design across the three avenues is not only non-intuitive, but inconsistent. Even with an abundance of access, I have yet to develop the sort of muscle memory that I would associate with the typical Google user interface.

On the desktop, it is part of a grouped threesome, and looks like a happy stop sign. And it's relative position remains the same whether I am in the inbox view or the message view. That feels like a UI that I could get used to.

On my Galaxy SII, the SPAM icon looks like an alien, with a varying location on the menu. When I select a thread from my inbox, it shows up as an option in first menu page. When I am within an email, however, it takes two menu clicks to get to the option.

Finally on my Thrive, it is an option available only on the overflow menu. While that might say a lot about how good Google thinks it's filters are, it still makes for a very annoying user experience.

Three form factors, and three different ways of thinking about Spam. It is time Google thought about design standards for across it's solutions, and not just for a platform.

Camera speed on Android

Check out the photograph above. This was taken while traveling in a car. Of particular focus are the lines on the road - they are actually straight, but show up as curved in the photograph.

When cameras were first added to cell phones, they were small, slow and blurry. The sensors were tiny, the lenses were basically plastic and the processors were slow. While the megapixel count has gone up, the optics have gotten better, the biggest bottleneck still remains the processing speed.

At least the Android platform has taken an interesting approach to overcoming this processing speed bottleneck. It seems the sensor is read in sequence, line by line, starting from the top. The advantage with the approach is obvious - the camera can process one line at a time, keeping the picture sharp and well processed.

The side effect is the effect showing up in the picture above. The straight lines on the road, show up as curved because the car moved in the time between when the first line of the sensor was read and the last.

Impulse Purchase

At long last, my Nokia 5800 has been retired from active service.

It has been replaced by my new Samsung Galaxy SII. And all this happened within a matter of a few hours.

I had been eyeing an Android phone for a while now. My first choice would have been the vanilla Nexus series - but they tend to be far too pricey and missing carrier specific frequency capabilities on their wireless chipsets. The next choice was the Galaxy series from Samsung. And that is when I saw this deal from RadioShack:

While this was about $50 more than the Black Friday deal from Radioshack, it was still a full $100 less than the discounted price on AT&T's website. And it hit my key checklist items.

• A tried and tested phone chassis - the Galaxy S II is the second in the highly successful Galaxy series.
• Minimal UI customization - unlike the HTC Sense UI, TouchWiz UI is relatively lightweight and optimized for speed.
• A known upgrade path to Ice Cream Sandwich.
• No known carrier hindrances to phone capabilities.
• Speed and responsiveness.

The Galaxy SII hit all points on the checklist - making the decision to switch surprisingly quick and painless. And RadioShack was not that bad an experience, as far as the tactical switch went. On a side note, I need to remind myself that RadioShack is probably a better option for buying electronics when I want something outside the standard mainstream products.

RIP: my ageing Nokia 5800 - you were a trailblazer, and were better than you had any reason to be. Yet, the trail was left cold after you, for no fault of yours. You will be missed.

Thrive upgrading to Android 3.2

Just had my Toshiba Thrive tell me that it has a system update waiting for me, to upgrade the Android version from Honeycomb 3.1 to 3.2. This is obviously the first step in the hopes of an eventual upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich.

The upgrade is a significant one and it is recommended that you do this over a WiFi connection and with the charger plugged in.

All did not start well with the upgrade however. The first attempt seemed to have bricked the gadget. The tablet did not restart and the on/off button wouldn't make any impression on it. However, once I removed the battery and replaced it, the upgrade continued as if nothing had happened.

Here is the new version!

More impressions once I've had a chance to play with the device more.

Pre-installed crud on the Thrive

Now that I've had a bit of time to play with my new fondle-slab, it is time to delve a bit more into what seems to be an odd philosophy from Toshiba in putting together the Thrive. The tablet comes with a near-vanilla version of the Android Honeycomb 3.1 OS, with a few useful Toshiba customizations and utilities. Then there is a curious collection of trial-ware and general crud, topped off with a collection of basic Google mobile goodies. Very little thought seems to have gone into in this - almost as if Toshiba was trying to be recklessly indifferent to its customers.

First the good news - full marks for minimal changes to the stock Honeycomb installation. Keeps the tablet zipping along without additional overhead while keeping the option open for future upgrades (Ice Cream Sandwich anyone?). That said, there aren't too many indications that Toshiba is going to upgrade, unlike Samsung or HTC.

There is then the matter of custom tools that Toshiba built for the occasion. They range from the very useful, like the Service Station and File Manager to the bug-ridden Media Player and the after-thoughts like the App Place and BookPlace™. The App Place is the strangest. It does not offer much more than the Android Marketplace, is not mandatory and yet is an app one cannot uninstall. Clearly as useful as the points system on Who's line is it anyway?.

If Toshiba's app collection is a puzzle, it's third party catalog is a disaster. Outside of the plugins for Adobe® AIR® and Flash, the rest are trial versions of tools that we probably have better, free alternates available for. To add insult to injury, one cannot uninstall them - not even when you buy the full version.

I get that there is an economic reason to include trial versions, but the inability to uninstall is little more than spite. If ever the argument was, “Hey, we think these are must-have apps, so try them out and buy them so we can a cut of the revenue”, there is no sign of it. Instead, the pitch now is, “I don't know or care if you like these apps, but because others have uninstalled them in the past, we are not gonna let you.”. Seems like a rather haphazard way of gaining supporters among your customers. Just try searching for Kaspersky+ Thrive and you can sense the frustration.

Dictating how you want others to use your device is a futile exercise - Apple gets away with it, because they can. Toshiba cannot. So whoever is making the final call on what to include and what not to, remember this - you are not Apple. Don't act like them.

Thriving with a Tablet

I got me a tablet. Or as Register prefers to call it, a fondle-slab.

This Groupon, got things rolling for me. The price point was close enough, that I could get into the world of tablets without the worry that I'd have a super-expensive paper weight if I figured the fondle-slab form factor was not for me.

First impressions, the Thrive is a great device. Feels a tad chunky coming out of the box, but on the flip side, the rubberized back feels very safe and the thickness allows it to be gripped well. One is not constantly worried that it is a matter of time before sweat on your palm will cause the tablet to slip.

Logging in with your Google account means that all of your data comes synchronized right away. All your contacts are in the contacts app, Gmail is up and running and the Photo viewer displays all your Picasa albums - all with no further configuration from you. I know this is true of all Android gadgets, but the effect is scary and giddy at the same time.

Final first impression - the screen. The 10.1 inch display packs in a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. The device is powered by the NVIDIA Tegra chip, withe graphics handled by a GeForce card. This graphics focused setup churns out crisp and smooth graphics, without a hint of hesitation. The resolution is so good, that looking at my made-for-web 600x400 crops from Picasa in full screen, made them look - ugly. The capacitive multi-touch screen is very responsive, making the user interface thus far, a real pleasure.

The price of freedom?

Interesting post floating about the last few days, from the blog understatement.com, giving a different spin on the fragmentation issue that has plagued Android phones since the beginning. While iPhones get the OS up to date periodically, Android phones are essentially at the mercy of the carriers and the device manufacturers.

The post outlines the impact of this fragmentation on users, developers and the security of the phone itself.

The biggest impact though, I think, is in actual sales. Selling an outdated phone means you have fewer people who want to now commit to a two-year lock-in. People are still buying the iPhone 3, because they know that it is a phone that is actively being supported by Apple.

And yet, for me, there is another aspect of this that is not obvious from this picture. The world of modified software.

CyanogenMod calls itself an aftermarket firmware for Android phones. Essentially it is a modification of the Android OS, which, unlike the iOS, is Open Source. It provides additional features, not available to stock Android devices. But more importantly, the capability is not forced like with a jail-broken iPhone, but using pieces of the original Android OS itself.

Yes, the fragmentation of the Android market means I am going to delay my purchase till I am sure I am getting a version that is going to last me for at least two years. But it is also the price I am willing to pay - for a device that is actually mine.

At least for now.

Angry birds, clueless pigs

The game Angry Birds, seems to be all the rage now. It is the top selling game on iTunes, and one of the most successful free games on the Android platform. It has apparently been downloaded 50 million times, and is responsible for 200 million fewer minutes of productive human existence each day. The game style itself is not new, but of course the execution of the game is snappy, beautiful and addictive. Yet, how many of us have paused to consider what we are really playing?

Apparently someone has, and made this video as proof.

Android on my PC

The Android-x86 project is an interesting idea - to essentially port Android to run on the x86 platform (another name for most PCs out there). They publish the latest stable version as an ISO designed to boot and run PC hardware. Of course most of us may not have spare machine lying around. Thanks to the good folks over at UNetbootin, it is possible to take this ISO and create a bootable USB and try Android on your PC without having to install it.

A detailed step-by-step how-to is also available. It turned out to be as easy as it looked on paper - download the two files, run one, find the other and plug in a USB drive. A a couple of minutes later, I was running Android on my laptop.

While it did run, a couple of quick caveats. First of all, the stable release from the Android x86 is the Donut (v 1.6) build. This is two behind the current Android version and does seem a bit old. Secondly, support for the hardware in your PC is a hit or miss. The project, rightly so, focuses on netbooks and not all PCs. If you have the EeePC, you may be able to try the latest build from Eclair (v2.0).

In my case, while the PC booted perfectly, my 'Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN card' was not detected and I could not turn WiFi on. This severely limited my use for it, but it was nevertheless cool to run the same OS as my wife's phone on my PC. The ethernet card seemed to have been recognized, but who carries a network cable around these days?

If you have a spare USB lying around, this is definitely a fun way to see your quad-core crank through a mobile OS.

Swype

Swype was a company I had followed ever since I first saw their video describing a new method for text input. Swyping instead of typing. A few days ago, I was able to take advantage of their limited beta for Android mobiles, and install it on my wife's Nexus One. And boy was it good!

Here is how it works, instead of typing the letters of a word on a soft mobile keyboard, you swipe a rough pattern through the corresponding letters on a QWERTY keyboard. For example, the pattern on the left is tracing the word - Swype. A couple of things stand out - firstly you do not have to be very precise. The tool is very forgiving and can recognize your intent easily. Secondly Swype comes with a 65,000 word dictionary that it adds to every time you type in a word it doesn't recognize. Both key features promise a very easy interface.

But how easy to use is it in practice? My wife picked up phone after having Swype enabled on it, and after tracing two words exclaimed excitedly - This is going to change everything. If you knew my wife, that is a sentence she wouldn't normally use for just any app. In addition Swype has a ton of tips and tricks that turn up the speed on mobile text input.

The Swype beta for Android mobiles is now closed. Other platforms are not supported yet, but according to the company, support is in the works.

The product works. The next challenge for the company is to quickly scale up the platform support - Android, iOS, Symbian and Windows Mobile. And to translate this support into OEM deals like with the T9.

Nexus One

There is always a phone, that comes out a little after you buy your own phone that makes you regret your own purchase. It is but a fact of modern life. Looks like this is the phone that is going to do that to me :).