“Last night we had a geek outing with our favorite hacker, Brian Jepson, who you may remember from our feature on Hacking the XO laptop. This time around Brian got a hold of a development G1 and hacked around with cupcake. Included in the video is a demonstration of the on-screen keyboard, prettier transitions, some fun in the Linux shell, and more. We also have some photos (the video was a little blurry) of the skateboarding androids–which come up as you hack–and the obligatory Snake game on the Android OS.”
Am I the only one who seems completely underwhelmed with Android? I just can’t get excited about it no matter how hard I try. Sorry android, I just don’t care about you.
Edited 2009-02-19 23:26 UTC
You expect too much from a phone that can also be used to watch videos, take pictures, surf the web, and play games on?
well when you compair it to other OS’s used in the embeded/phone world, it just doesn’t have the same geek apeal as say Symbian/QNX/WinCE/others which have a really rich background and are, dare I say, “fun” to code for.
Are you kidding me? Android is an awesome platform and a great phone OS, i have the White G1 and it is the best phone i have ever used, everything is so easy to use.
Is the G1’s battery life as bad as everyone says it is? iPhone has fairly poor battery life – if I use the iPod function for 2 – 3 hours and surf the web on edge and do a few podcast downloads on WIFI/3G, I get 2 days life out of the battery (don’t frequently use the phone to make calls during the day, as it’s a personal line.) If I don’t use much other than EDGE and apps, I can squeeze 3.5 days out of it. I heard the G1 has significantly less battery life in comparison. Is that true?
damn. I’m doing good to get 2 days out of my Treo 800w with its horribly small stock battery. I haven’t had a chance to get an extended one, yet.
*sigh*, I miss the week long battery life of my startac.
Symbian, QNX and WinCE are FUN to code for?
You might not the only one underwhelmed by Android, but I’d say you are in a very, very small group.
I do find the G1 unattractive, but just you watch that space for everything that’s coming.
WinCE is just going to be blown out of the water. And although the iPhone is fantastic (with all its self-imposed limitations), we’ll see what happens now with its market share once Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG, SonyEricsson start delivering Android.
Operators which were not favored with a deal with Apple will get a competitive platform they can market without selling their soul to Apple. No income sharing for internet traffic, and they keep the profit from the software store. Interest is guaranteed.
Even given all that, you can still find Android technically underwhelming, but I just cannot see why. Still, the Free Software license means that improvements to the code from all participants will snowball, so fast progress is very likely.
Windows Mobile sucks. iPhone OS is nice but too fat for phones (Which is why you cant have background processes running outside of the ones Apple approves)
Android is the most open and one of the most easy to code for. If you can code in Eclipse then you are good to go.
I see Android being everywhere in the next 12 to 18 months.
We know that to keep up MS is going to have to copy Apple as always and make a unified App Store to try and stay relevant. But Windows Mobile is so 90’s
The G1 phone it’s self sucks, but HTC was just testing the water with this first phone to see if Android would be popular so thy made a cheap phone and people still love it.
I see Android moving to the #2 spot in the future behind Symbian
Edited 2009-02-20 15:27 UTC
Wow, a very suprising comment from someone with your user name….
Wow, surprising reply, with nothing to back up while my statement is not true, name or not.
You’re not the only one underwhelmed. But then again, I didn’t get excited over the iPhone either.
Edited 2009-02-20 01:24 UTC
*gasp* You don’t worship the Jesus OS, either?!?!
Be careful, someone might shank you
I dunno, maybe calling an OS release Cupcake is to blame?
For their sake they better not call it Tinkletoes (or some other gay innuendo) for their next release.
Actually, “cupcake” is just the name of the internal branch at google, which has been opened since some time. It is by NO means a release of the os.
As for the “first” look, there has already been plenty of them over the web since weeks…
The N800 port of Android has been using and regularly syncing the source with the cupcake branch since January. Nothing to see here, move along 🙂
The vast majority of the excitement regarding android has to do more with the Google effect than the actual device or software itself. Its amazing to see how much slack is given to Google even though a good number of their desktop applications are horrible. The desktop search and integration is simply awful (it was preloaded onto the Aspire One I’m using now (since upgraded from Windows XP to Linux (Windows versions were the only ones available))).
I’m always surprised how Microsoft puts out a mediocre product and there is swearing and cursing – yet a competitor/third party does a similar thing with their own product and not a single thing is said. There is the Reality Distortion Field and now we have the ‘Google Effect’ – where all critical thinking is thrown out in favour of venerating the multicoloured Google logo.
Edited 2009-02-21 00:49 UTC