Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 24th Jun 2009 18:28 UTC
We've been talking an awful lot about the Palm Pre and iPhone lately, but what about Android? Sure, we've mentioned Android a number of times when it comes to netbooks, but what about phones, you know, what Android is designed for? Well, today, HTC annoucned its 3rd Android phone, the HTC Hero. This is the first to include a custom UI, as well as Flash 10 right out of the box.
Thread beginning with comment 370159
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2005-07-06
Yes, I use my T-Mobile G1 Android phone with Ubuntu and the Xfce desktop. It mounts as a USB drive. You can just drag files to it or open a terminal and copy away. I might be biased since I use the phone each day, but wow this phone seriously rocks. You can do some cool hacks with it. I couldn't wait for the Cupcake update of Android and downloaded it and flashed the phone manually -- I was crossing my fingers hoping it wouldn't brick. It doesn't have the eye candy the iPhone has but if you use Google's web applications it really shines. Once in a while I worry about Google tracking me with it but I think I have given up on the idea of privacy anymore. They can have all my crappy data, as long as they don't spam me. And about the new Android phones, the original one with the slide out keyboard is more useful if you do a lot of typing. I use the onscreen keyboard for quick replies but having the full button keyboard rocks for quick texting. Oh, I should mention the downfall of the current G1 phone, battery life. If I turn on G3, GPS and do a lot of web browsing and texting I get about 4 hrs. of battery. I ended up turning off G3 and GPS to stretch the battery to 8 hrs. The funny thing about these smart phones is the manufacturers slyly avoid talking about the poor battery life. The iPhone has the same problem. Turn on all the bells and whistles and the battery runs down quick. The irony is that when you turn off the cool features you are left with a fancy looking regular cell phone. Ah, progress.
You've raised some interesting points that I think many people overlook, especially in regards to battery life. I remember having a Sony 'smart phone' a few years ago and the battery life was terrible; where if I forgot to plug it in at the end of the day I would find the next day my phone would be useless. This wasn't just normal use but when apparently it should have been put into low power mode.
For me the smart phones remind me very much of the time when I had an iPod Touch (before moving to an iPod 'Classic') - I was in love with the idea of being able to surf the net, run applications, watch movies and so forth but when reality kicked in I actually used none of the features and simply stuck to listening to music. Same situation when I had my Sony smartphone. I was enchanted by the geekery behind the scenes and all the neat features but the reality was that I never used any of them.