J's blog

After carrying a palm pilot for over 12 years, I am almost ready to stop.

Most folks who see this won’t care for any data beyond this.  You might if you currently hate AT&T or the iphone, however…

Twelve years of data have almost completely transitioned to the new android phone.  Twelve years of contacts, migrated.  Twelve years of calendar, migrated.  To-do list, migrated.  Notes, migrated.  Outlines, migrated.  Bookmarks, migrated.  Autographs (yes, autographs), migrated.  Music, migrated (see why you use mp3s and not whatever-apple-calls-theirs?)  Photos, migrated.

Applications?  Only one silly one is missing: a falling timer, where you click when something starts falling, click when it stops, and it tells you how long and how far it fell.  (This one is something simple enough that I think it will make me become a part-time android devloper!)

There are several games that I had on my palm that currently have no equivalent on android:

• Bridge
• Craps
• Monopoly
• Mille Bournes
• Scrabble
• 8-off solitaire

Again, any of these could make me become a part-time android developer.

Some folks are going to ask, “Why android?”

Because it is open.  You don’t have to use their app store.  Anyone can develop for it, and the underlying OS source code is available for anyone to look at.  Unlike the iphone, it can run more than one application at a time.  Unlike the new palm, anyone can develop for it.

Right now, there are 2 phones in the US that run android, but many more are on the way.  The camera on the mytouch is better than the iphone, but even better ones will be here soon.

I can now do all the things that matter that I could do before, and only carry one device.

New things I can do:

• sync contacts automatically, I don’t have to wait to hook up to my computer
• import contacts from linkedin, facebook (with photos and phone numbers!) and more
• GPS-tag photos (actually, anything GPS-related, like google latitude)
• share photos and videos while still out and about with my gallery2 installation, picasa, facebook and SMS
• google voice
• podcasts with google listen

Things that need work:

• Rotation.  I don’t have a hard keyboard, let me rotate in any direction.
• We need more bluetooth support, especially for objects
• We need a good, full-featured solitaire that knows all variants
• I’m chomping at the bit for ereader.com to get an android app out, but fbreader is okay in the meantime.
• Support for both personal and work google accounts would be fantastic
• More processor power and more battery, or at least give programs in the foreground more priority

Some things I have discovered:

• Openhome locked my phone; I’m going to stick with freshface.
• Since I had all my apps backed up with astro, restoring from the locked phone took less than 30 minutes.
• Restored apps from astro do not update automatically until you reinstall them from the market.
• Get a task killer
• Visual voicemail needs to not have wifi enabled when it starts the first time
• Bluetooth file transfer  is the best bluetooth app so far
• Astro is currently the best file manager.
• Spare parts is currently the best additional settings tweak tool.
• Lock2 makes it feel more like the iphone on startup
• A page of shortcuts to people beats speed-dial – especially if those shortcuts have photos!
• androlib.com with a qr-code scanning program (I use barcode scanner) makes finding and installing new software a breeze!
• The donut firmware upgrade sped things up considerably, and added VPN
• My online shopping list works just fine in any webkit browser

The worst news?  I cannot find my list of birthdays.  I’m going to have to get those from everyone again.  (Update between writing and posting this:  Between ebobirthday and syncmypix, almost all the birthdays are back, and more — I’m only really missing birthdays for children too young to be on facebook.  That’s manageable!)