Archive for July, 2009
HTC Hero Review
Jul 24th
OK I managed to get me a Hero through on Orange on Wednesday and it was delivered 24 hours ago, since then I have put it through its paces before writing this review.
First Thoughts:
Having used and loved the G1 for a number of months now I was expecting to be disappointed in the Hero due to its lack of physical QWERTY, perhaps just cushioning myself for what lay ahead. As the courier handed me the parcel I could hardly believe the size of the box within the bag, It is literally half the size of the G1 box and there isn’t a magnetic catch in sight!
Bundled in the box is the new type HTC charger which utilises the data cable to charge the phone, a set of 3.5mm headphones with built in mic, play/pause, forward and backward controls and a quick start guide, oh and obviously the phone itself.
There is no manual bundled or a CD containing software, the later not being surprising seeing as Android devices don’t sync with the PC (or do they) and applications are installed over the air through the market.
Sadly the Hero doesn’t come with a slip case as the G1 did.
So I gently lifted the Hero out of the box and turned it on, the familiar vibration went off in my hand and it started to come to life, the Hero feels a lot better in the hand over the G1, it doesn’t creak for starters which means it feels a lot more solid and more expensive as the device has a rubberised feel to it, with a nice cold brushed steel bezel around the screen and housing the four oval evenly spaced buttons, Call Home Menu & Call End (power on/off) , below that with have the centrally placed trackball and a single switch containing Search to the left and Back to the right, I have yet to mistakenly press one for the other and if pressing the Back key causes spasms in your thumb then you are holding the device wrong and yes, I am right handed!
Above the not so smudge proof screen lie what appears to be two leds separated by a nice piece of mesh covering the internal speaker, to the left are the only other two buttons and that is the Volume rocker switch, yep the Hero is devoid of a dedicated camera button (more about that later) to the top we have a not so familiar looking hole on a HTC device and that would be the 3.5mm headphone socket, oh joy of joy’s at last I can listen to music whilst the device is being charged, i.e when in bed! The battery cover covers the whole back nothing new there, and it has four holes, one for the camera (just a hole no glass!) and oval slot for the speaker and another smaller oval for a lanyard and the hole at the top for the 3.5mm socket. The only Orange branding externally is the logo to the back, which means it will be easily replaced as soon as new covers are available.
So initially I like this device over the G1 it feels more solid, smaller, looks more expensive and has a 3.5mm headphone socket, BUT it does lack the physical QWERTY and a dedicated camera button! how will I cope??
The Device Boots:
And so it begins, set up on the Hero is a little more than just giving the device your Gmail account, the Hero wants more, it wants your FaceBook details, your Flickr details and your Twitter details I’ll go into that in more detail later, in order to really test the device I want to use it just as I did the G1 although that will be limited due to the fact I was running the G1 as a Dev phone which was rooted and I ran the apps from the SD this option isn’t open to me yet with the Hero. Realising that the Hero comes bundled with a paltry 2GB micro SD I will need the 8GB card out of the G1, which will need formatting before being used, I also don’t want to lose the bundled items from the supplied 2GB card so I will have to copy them across too.
On the supplied 2GB card is HTC Sync a piece of software to install on your PC which will allow synchronisation with Outlook on the PC something I haven’t used since Google came along and I can sync, contacts & calendar OTA to both the Hero and the Bold so I haven’t installed HTC sync yet, though I will if only to see what it is all about. As well as the sync software the full Hero manual can be found in PDF format, and a few sample images, a video and quite a bit of music.
Setting up the home screen is far better with all the HTC niceness that comes bundled with the Hero there are far more widgets to choose from including the original Google widgets which to be honest would look out of place if you were to implement any of these. From HTC we have the Bookmarks widget with a choice of 2 styles, the Calendar widget again with 2 styles, the Clock widget with 12 styles to choose from, Footprints with 2 styles, Mail & Messages widgets with 1 style each, the Music widget with 2 styles, People, Photo Album & Photo Frame widgets with 1 style each, HTC’s own search widget, Settings widgets including Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, GPS, Mobile Network & WiFi, there is a lot a choice of 3 styles of Stock widgets, 2 styles of Tweeter widgets and 3 styles of Weather widgets.
With all that choice it is very quick to get the 7 screens set-up to run just how you want it to, but what if you choose the larger widgets which occupy the 1 whole screen, you can quickly find yourself running out of space, this is where scenes comes into play to start with HTC gives you 5 scenes HTC, Social, Work, Play & Travel there is then a clean slate option and you can create and save scenes of your own as well as making changes to one of HTC’s pre built scenes and saving your changes! So really the choices are endless.
I also had a list of Apps I wanted to bring over to the Hero, a few apps were crossed off the list immediately, as the Hero comes bundled with a Twitter client “Peep” which is suspiciously like Twidroid I will no longer need that, “Peep” also has it’s own Twitter widget so I will no longer need Twidgit, I would still like to use Twidgit but I don’t think HTC want me too as it doesn’t appear on the market on the Hero yet it does on the G1! As the Hero also links to your Flickr account I won’t need any of the 2 Flickr apps I have previously paid for, another app is weather I had a few running on the G1 but the Hero’s weather widget kicks ass so I no longer need any of those! I can no longer use any of the apps that required root so they can go! Although the messaging app on the Hero is quite nice and has it’s own widget I have grown to like Handcent SMS which brings a lot of good options to the device, such as a pop up for new SMS, text to speech, bubble style chat, and repeat notifications to name a few. Unfortunately I don’t have a choice to link the messages widget to to handcent app which is a shame, it also shows HTC is flexing it’s muscles over what you can and can’t do but I am sure the Dev’s will get around that little problem in time. Another app I really like is a simple app, Scrobble Droid which basically scrobbles your played music to last.fm but it doesn’t work with HTC’s music app, though the developer of Scrobble Droid assures me he is looking into this.
So with all the apps I want now installed and running I have noticed none of the sluggishness I had on the G1, though to be fair HTC has taken over the jobs I had previously used apps for so I should imagine the memory management will now be better.
Time to test the keyboard:
I have had HTC’s keyboard on the G1 for a while so that was nothing new to me, the responsiveness on the other hand was, using the onscreen keyboard on the G1 could be frustrating at times yet on the Hero it is a breeze using a similar correction system as the iPhone it works really well, in fact it’s very impressive, one thing fixed over the G1 is the edge of screen responsiveness has been tweaked which means pressing the keys closer to the edge now works! Whichever way you use the keyboard whether it be with one finger in portrait or both thumbs in landscape it is a joy to use. Sure I’ll miss the G1′s qwerty but I certainly don’t need it and if not having it gives me a sturdier device and shaves a few mm off it’s bulk then so be it!
No Camera key???
So there is no dedicated camera key, hmmmm so I can’t start the camera by pressing a physical key? but I can place numerous icons on the screen! using the trackball is surprisingly comfy and having the ability to zoom in and out with the same thumb is just genius, again those reporting using the trackball as awkward and nearly dropping the device you are holding it wrong and you have 2 hands don’t you? use them!!!
The camera itself is pretty good, no LED is a bit of a let down but lets remember this is a phone if I want to take shots in the dark I have a few digital cameras for that! as I mentioned before the zoom and shoot key are handled by the trackball which works well, if it doesn’t now give it a short while and it will my thumb hasn’t slipped using the trackball for well over a year now as it is the same unit used in BlackBerry Smartphones I have had a bit of practice! In fact the same zoom/shoot setup using the trackball is used on BlackBerry though they have the camera key as well.
So we got a 3.5mm socket:
This means I can use my Shure’s with the device which can only be a good thing as the bundled headphones are pretty poor, no volume control to be found just forward/back & play/pause yeah that is more than the Shure’s have but I’d rather have no remote and proper sound!
Hopefully HTC will bring out a nice set of headphones with an in-line remote and a 3.5mm socket just after. The location of the socket works well for me too I prefer to have the socket at the top as it feels better in the pocket.
Final word (for now)
So is the Hero an iPhone killer? No it isn’t!
Why oh why do we have to have that question asked all the time?? why does the iPhone need to be killed off?? surely that would be for the worse!
What we have is a bloody good device in it’s own rights, sure it shares similarities with the iPhone but people seem to forget we had touchscreen phones long before the iPhone!
The Hero is a good alternative for those who want to use an up and coming OS, for those who don’t want to sign away their soul to O2 for an iPhone, for those who are sick of Nokia feeding them S60 which they have done for a good few years now, for those who are fed up of the archaic Windows Mobile which is still essentially the same OS I was using nearly 10 years ago on my Hewlett Packard Jornada.
I certainly don’t regret getting the Hero and doubt I will, OK there will be newer and better devices out, some using the new Snap Dragon processor but for now I’m a happy chappy!
I will be adding more to the Blog as I individually test out apps on the Hero so keep tuned!
The New BlackBerry Messenger v5 In Action!
Jul 18th
Well I gave in and downloaded the new BlackBerry messenger this morning using links provided by BlackBerryos.com. To install simply select your version from the list download and unzip to your desktop, open up BB DTM choose Application Loader, then Add/Remove Applications and then Browse to where you unzipped the new .alx file, it may tell you it isn’t compatible as mine did but you may also notice it says BB messenger will be updated, continue and in a few minutes you’ll be rocking the new version!
So it seems RIM have brought their own messenger app kicking and screaming into the new IM era, I kinda liked it how it was to be honest but I’m sure all the new functionality brought with this will win me over, there are a ton of new smilies and a new way of implementing them, location requests are bundled too with the ability to allow fellow messengers to see your location either by default or by prompting, you can also block requests by those you don’t really like! Sending files is a little easier and as far as pictures are concerned, it now shows thumbnails as default, something which used to irritate me a lot on the old messenger, though now you are prompted to crop your picture before sending which I don’t really like but I’ll look into this further!
Toshiba TG01 Review by Dogmann
Jul 17th
Hi all,
Well I got this device on Tuesday and have to say that I really am very impressed by it as the build quality is excellent most of the device is made up of the screen on the front with just two touch sensitive buttons on the bottom either side of the zoom bar. At the top of the phone above the screen is the notification light and that’s all so the look is very smart and uncluttered. On the back of the device at centre top is the 3.2 Mega Pixel camera and just below this is Toshiba in silver. About an inch above the bottom of the device is the speaker and the Orange logo in a small square and next to that the model identification of TG01.
On the outside of the right hand side of the device a couple of inches down is the flap that covers the Micro USB port that is used for charging and syncing the devcie and also used for connecting the Hands free unit to the supplied ear phones or your own as it houses a 3.5mm socket. About the same distance from the bottom on the same side is the Camera key and although it is quite small it is very tactile and easy to use. On the left hand side of the device again a couple of inches up from the bottom is the Volume control key and again whilst it is quite small it is also very tactile and easy to use. Another couple of inches above this is the small power on key that can also be used to wake the device up with a short press. Now although it’s quite a large device due to the 4.1″ screen it is very thin at just 9.9mm and is not heavy at just 129gms.
It comes with a good range of accessories in the box the first and most noticeable is a 8GB Toshiba Micro SDHC card along with a Micro to full size SD card converter no one can accuse Toshiba of being stingy here. The other accessories are a nice wall to Micro USB charger, USB to Micro USB data cable, USB to Micro USB adapter, Micro USB to 3.5mm hands free kit, Ear phones, a stylus with attachment cable and loop. Under all of this once you take the main part of the box out is the Toshiba quick start guide and two Cd’s ones the user guide and the other is the Active Sync or Mobile Device Centre software.
Here are a few pictures of the box the device and some of the contents.
So after unpacking it and installing and plugging it in to charge I left it for a couple of hours so the Li-Ion battery fully charged whilst it was doing this I installed the Mobile Device Centre software on my Vista laptop. Once it was fully charged I turned on the TGO1 it took quite a while for the first boot and then went to an Auto install of some Cabs after which it re started itself as it was meant to. So the first thing I did after this was to set up the date and time and the adjust the brightness to full for both on battery or external power this is something I do on all my devcies as just don’t care about battery life over have the best screen possible. I also set my preferences for the screen time out now at this point I was blown away but just how bright and clear and crisp the screen was it’s truly stunning and as good as the Samsung AMOLED screen on the i8910HD from what I can remember.
I then set up my WiFi connection which really was very quick and easy it only required selecting my Router from ones available and entering my Wireless Key. I then explored the two options of Home Screen UI’s that are on the TGO1 the first is the Orange Home Screen with icons all down the left side of the device which is very similar to the Touchwiz interface that is found on the i8910HD. Well I didn’t like it on that devcie and I don’t like on this one either the second option is the Toshiba Stripes UI and whilst it is very responsive and has plenty of customisation options as to the order of the what the Stripes access along with the possibility to enhance and add things to the Stripes I didn’t like the size of the icons on the stripes. As I knew my TG01 was coming I had already searched and found the apps I thought I might want or need on it, the first and to me the most important one was SPB Mobile Shell so I installed the trial version to see if it is worth the $29.99 or not. It only took a couple of minutes for me to release it was indeed worth every cent IMO and it really transforms the device into to being finger user friendly. It also manages to keep you away from having to interact with the normal WM6.1 interface and it’s worth the money for that alone as it just makes the device so easy to navigate access and use.
Once this was installed I had a little explore of it’s options and at this point realised just how fast the TG01 is there is no lag or stutters anywhere and the screen really is incredibly responsive. As long as you remember it’s not a capacitive screen but resistive so requires a light press and then swipe as opposed to just swiping the surface it works incredibly well. Comparing it to the two touch screen devcies I’ve used recently the Samsung i8910HD with Capacitive screen and the Nokia N97 with resistive it’s just in a different class. As far as both the screen and the Os being responsive I then decided to check out the new MIE6 and have to say I really wasn’t very impressed so installed the trial version of Opera Mobile instead after trying this out for a short while I was very impressed at both the download speed and the ease of navigation and the way it displays yet another must have IMO. After this I continued to install the apps I had found below is the list of all the apps I have installed so far.
SPB Mobile Shell 3.0 trial version but am purchasing it as a must have.
Opera Mobile trial same as above.
Seven Push E-Mail Free Beta.
Screen Capture Freeware.
PocketTwit Freeware a Twitter app.
MyPlayer and BBC iPlayer and ITV Player Freeware
Alarm Master v2.0 Trial and again am going to buy it.
Now I know there are free alternatives or certain places I could get all of these for free but that’s just not my way even for some freeware if the developer has a donation option and I like and use the app I donate. As IMO that is how we encourage and keep these guys delivering great apps for what ever OS we are using, otherwise why should they bother?
The next thing I did was transfer some Albums to the memory card whilst still in the TG01 and then some of my US TV shows that are DivX encoded Avi’s. Having already checked out the CorePlayer site I then proceeded to set up CorePlayer as my default player and set it to search my memory card for Music, Video and Pictures. Listening to Music via CorePlayer using my Shure EC2g ear phones and the hands free adapter and 3.5mm point is very good indeed my music sound bright crisp and clear with great sound stage. Watching videos in full screen are just stunning the colours are bright and clear and there are no motion artefact’s at all. I know Toshiba have claimed that they have employed the same technology as used in thier Regaza flat panel TV’s but the results they have achieved truly are stunning. I know a normal TFT screen even if it is 800 x 480 shouldn’t be able to get near to a AMLOED screen but from what I can remember there really can’t be much in it. In fact I’m going to have to go to an Orange shop to compare them myself to be sure my memory’s not playing tricks on me.
I’m really not sure just how much I would of liked the TG01 without SPB Mobile Shell as IMO it really is a tremendous product that just makes the TG01 just so usable. Obviously the processor and Ram help it all run fast and smooth and with the aid of CorePlayer pre installed it just makes for a compelling experience and IMO a devcie currently without equal well at least not for what I want and need it to do.
IMO it’s far better then what I have seen of Touch Flo 3D and in conjunction with the processor and Ram found in the TG01 it turns it into a truly stunning and easy to use device. If two weeks ago someone told me I’d be using WM6.1 and loving it I would of thought they were crazy but it just goes to show you never say never and always have an open mind and be prepared to try something. You never know you may get a surprise and like it as has happened to me, I could of sworn I was getting the HTC Hero?
Well that’s all for now and my initial impressions in a few days time I will have more to say about the Web browsing experience using Opera Mobile and how I am finding the device in day to day use and of course just how I’m finding battery life to be. But all I can say so far is that in the couple of days I’ve had it it’s definitely a keeper for me and is is one of if not the best devcie I’ve owned and used.
Marc
Android Live up and running in XP
Jul 16th
Here’s a quick guide on how to get Android Live up and running in XP using Virtual Box:
- Download and install Virtual Box for windows from here
- Download Android live .iso file from here and save to desktop
- Double click on the Sun xVM VirtualBox icon on your desktop
- Next click on “new” and a wizard will pop up.
- VM Name and OS type for this I chose Android as the name and Linux V2.6 as the OS type.
- Memory, I chose 512MB which should be ample
- Hard Disk as we will be using the ISO we downloaded earlier we can skip this step simply deselect “Boot Hard Disk” press next, a warning will pop up, select continue which will take you to the summary screen, select finish.
- Now we have set up the VM we need to edit a few settings
- Select Settings
- Then select Network and change NAT to Bridged
- Then select your wireless device in the drop down box below.
- Next we need to select the ISO navigate to CD/DVD ROM check the box to the left of Mount CD/DVD ROM, then select ISO Image File and then select the ISO you downloaded to your desktop. Close the settings window and run the new VM you have just created.
- If successful a new window should pop up containing the VM
- Give the search a try to see if your network connection is successful
- And there we have it up and running and connected to WiFi
The Virtual Machine will capture your keyboard and mouse to release them for use outside of the VM simply press the right ctrl key. To go home using Android use the windows start key and to bring up the menu use the menu key to the right of the right hand windows start key.
All credit goes to the guys at Live Android follow them on twitter or take a look at the Live Android site
Apparently we will be seeing ADB access and the ability to make an SD card in the future release which should open a whole new world of possibilities, Hero Rom anyone??
Google Voice BlackBerry App just released!
Jul 15th
I have just downloaded GoogleVoice for BlackBerry from m.google.com/voice and also for Android from the market. Unfortunately Google isn’t showing us any love regarding Voice in the UK yet and I have no idea how long it will be before we see it implemented.
In the meantime I have grabbed some screen shots for the BlackBerry from my Bold and borrowed some for the Android from BerryReview.
More information regarding Google Voice features can be found on Google’s official page I will report back when we are able to actually use the app!
