Mobile gadgets running Blackberry & Android OS'
Archive for August, 2010
I chose to choose the worse – yet another iPhone4 vs HTC Desire comparison
1641 days
I keep on playing with an iPhone 4 for a few days now. Why? I have one of the best smartphones on the market at the moment, namely the HTC Desire. It’s got one of the best OS’ in existence at the moment: Android by Google. It does almost everything I need it to do and shines-on except for a few small “unimportant” details, like battery life and the lack of pushed-email (Vodafone’s fault on this one!). Then why looking over the fence where everybody says the grass is greener?
Well, curiosity. Inquisitive curiosity. And hype. A job at which Apple’s always ace.
While I’ve only used it seldom, I’ve been able to go thru quite a few situations of an everyday smartphone user: I browsed the net, posted to Twitter, used various applications, downloaded a free application from the App Store and…fell-out of love with the iPhone 4. You take a picture. You wanna share it with friends. You can’t beam it thru Bluetooth, there is no option to do it. You can’t send it on TwitPic by uploading it on the site – the “browse files” button was greyed-out (no, it wasn’t a Flash button, works like a charm on my Desire) due to the fact that the iPhone has a security procedure in place (enforced by a password) of not allowing anything in a browser to read the files in the phone. Plain stupid? Yes, if you ask me. You can’t email it to Posterous or to other emails because for example, you have a problem with your SMTP server, like I did.
And why is this all happening? Just because Steve decided to “protect” the consumer. Who asked for this? Not the king, the customer himself. Of course, I can understand the logic and the logistics behind this great, great progressive undertaking but I’m not sure it was done in our best interest.
Looking over the fence again, I see a regulated but self propelled market of innovative, useful and mostly free apps that can be installed at user’s free will. Are the Android users less protected? No, I don’t think so. The system is different. There will always be hackers to combat and holes to plug.
But you know what they say: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
Posted from WordPress for Android
The “pointless” Task Manager strikes back!
1646 days
You know what they say: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions!”. As I wrote the other day, people say task managers are useless. While I tend to agree with them, as I already said, there are times when you need them for additional purposes. And yesterday I had to find out the hard way: I used Motonav all day long while receiving lots and lots of calls. The navigation would go in the background allowing the call to go through and would comeback to foreground when I finished the call.
I’ve been very happy to see it worked flawlessly until it just went black. The screen went black. I could see the Motonav launching but it wouldn’t show me the map and so on. Now what? Well, I thought that once I don’t have the Advanced Task Manager (it’s absolutely useless, remember?), I’d wait because it will ultimately go away by itself, like I read in that fancy article!
Half an hour later I tried to start Motonov: though luck! I really needed to get to the hotel, so I did what every Android power-user would do: I downloaded the first task manager I could get my finger on, shut down the Motonav app (and the camera, the Market app, etc) and restarted it. Job done.
Wait! A restart should’ve done it! Damn! I gotta stop use this damn pointless task manager thing:)
Posted from WordPress for Android
Are the Task Managers in Android pointless?
2649 days
Well, it seems it’s true. I’ve been using one since the Symbian days. Without one my Sony-Ericsson P910i wouldn’t function. My next smartphone, the Sony-Ericsson P1i became sluggish in operation and would reset at the end of the day. Those particular Task Managers were quite specialized: they would automatically shut-down unused applications, double as file managers, etc.
And now, yes, it seems we suffer from a Placebo effect: we seem to need it. It “seems” because Task Managers are still good with shuting-down apps when you need the battery juice. They are good with switching between the Alps because my Task Manager Pro places an icon on the upper taskbar.
Truth being told, after reading the above article I went and fired-up the camera, then left it idle (see the picture) for a few hours. Sure thing it wasn’t there when I checked.
So I will uninstall it for a week and see how it goes. I’m interested in battery life especially.
Posted from WordPress for Android
