Just yesterday, while reading the news, I found out about an Android application that will allow you to send free SMS. It’s called JaxtrSMS and it works. Just like the description brags it allows you to send worldwide SMS’, even coming from your number, not some shoddy service over the Internet. It uses data and some complain that 5 MB/day is a bit much when you’re not sending many SMSes.

I registered with my name and mobile number and I’ve tried it a few times on various numbers. By the time I pressed the “Back” button to exit the app the SMS was delivered! JaxtrSMS is a bit slow, its blue background comes a bit hard down on my eyes, especially when the writing is pale white. Your recipient’s replies are coming into the SMS Inbox as usual.

What I really found out afterwards is what pisses me off: the application will send a separate SMS or add ads to your initial SMS urging the recipient of your message to signup for the free service! And I can’t find a disclaimer letting you know about this when you sign-up for the service. I used to use a service like this more than 10 years ago and paid for it. The free portions also contained an ad, but it was the link to the service, 20 chars or so.

Of course, I unistalled the app right away.

It is a nice option but not for me. And the fact that it’s coming from Sabeer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail, makes no difference; in my eyes it’s still spam.

             12 days ago I was happy to report that a 2.0 version of Google Plus for Android has been leaked! I also shared it to a lot of people, finding about it very early on a Saturday morning, thus having a high share of re-posts on Google Plus.

I’ve used it ever since up until last week, when suddenly I got a “corrupt” message when I tried to open the “People” application on my Desire HD. To my horror, I was unable to access any other contact in my phone except for the ones in the call logs! Being a  HTC core application, I knew I was in trouble.

I guess I don’t have to mention I spent the next hour trying to find a way to get into my People app and get the contacts. To no avail. I even installed 3rd party contacts apps only to receive the same error no matter what I did.

I tried contacting HTC on Twitter: no reply. I figured “whatta hell, they’re busy, screw this, I’m reinstalling”. Everything. Relying on HTC Sense’s backup. Bad idea. I ended-up reinstalling everything from scratch. Then the phone wouldn’t log on GTalk, so I couldn’t use the Market at all.

Long story short, after 2-3 Master Resets and cleaning up the 8 GB card I was informed that the G+ 2.0 was the culprit. I don’t know why but I guess it has to do with IceCream Sandwich and the way it handles the new “People” application in the Android OS.

So back to 1.08 (updated, nice!) and I kinda miss the 2.0 improvements and nice design.

I wanted to ask if any of you had that issue? Because I know for a fact that not everyone had this issue (I know a Froyo user who had no problems) ; the 2.0 version had a bug with not receiving pictures in the new Chord application and had to be uninstalled.

Picture courtesy of FreeFoto.

Saturday morning is always better when you find-out about a new update for the newly born Google Pus for Android!

It sports a new look: the notifications were moved from the bottom of the screen to the top. The notifications number is bigger and rounder on the edges.  The “Messages” section was renamed “Chord” to differentiate from all the others.

Every section of the application was changed or improved: “Profile” has 3 sections now – Posts, About and Photos. You can now browse all your data. “Circles” shows you everyone in your Circles based on your choosing, individual “People” in a different section, o.. You can also make a new Circle right from the phone.

I also noticed the performance was improved. The timeline started almost instantly compared to 1.07 I rocked till now. The app also starts-up faster when the icon is pressed.

I am sure there will be bugs, they always are. For now I have only one wish: I hope they fixed the phantom

notifications. They always show up, no matter how may times you read that them and it’s quite annoying.

Is this the Ice Cream Sandwich version? Might be, I found no indication in those regards.

Version 2.0.0, build 10000 and you can find it here.

Just a quick update on a great Live wallpaper I stumbled across Friday.

It’s called Verizon Wave Live Wallpaper and it was taken from a file – dump of the leaked upcoming HTC Vigor Android smartphone on Verizon U.S.A. Among other files like regular wallpapers and ringtones was this file. The only thing I wanna write about is that it doesn’t consume more energy than a regular wallpaper. It does not appear in the battery consumption log which means it takes less than 1% of the weak 1230 mAh equipping my Desire HD.

Oh, yes, some of the users report it causes motion sickness, so be aware!:)

A demo here from bmmahfood user on YouTube.

You can get it here.

Yet another update for Google Reader! A very useful tool for reading and sharing everything we read over the Internet.

This time around they introduced a new U.I and optimized it for tablets. I like the flowing transitions, it’s definitely a big improvement over the dull and static interface we’ve employed for almost a year now. The team also altered a very important function; the “Mark All Read” is now contextual, which means I need to press long on an item in order to mark all previous as read. It’s a bit annoying but I guess it’s the same thing as hitting “menu” and “mark previous as read” – there were two clicks before as now there’s only one…oh, well.

Other than that, I can remark the adding of “share” and “star it” on the top right thus enabling the reader to quickly share with others or mark it in order to read it later.

A good improvement all in all! Keep ‘em comin’!

Pictures courtesy of Google.

Update: A new version was pushed today; it seems some of the devices required bug fixes. My Desire HD has/had no issue.

YouTube comes baked into each Android phone. It offers OOTB functionality, nice U.I, lots of options including uploading from the phone.

I’ve used it for a long  time “as is” – I’m not an avid consumer of video clips, but this app always served me as expected: full screen, HD available, not too much buffering required, no hassle.

And today it has been updated! Things you can expect:

1. Edit the title, description and privacy of your uploaded videos
2. New uploading UI integrated into the app
3. Create/Edit/Delete playlists on the go
4. Bug fixes and performance improvements

These days consuming data on the move is as natural as talking on the phone ten years ago. Most of the people I know have data-enabled phones or smartphones. We all use Twitter, Facebook (not me but that’s another story!), Y!M, GTalk, email, browsers and weather apps. In Romania they’ve introduced recently data service on prepaid SIMs, a first for big operators like Vodafone and Orange over here. I’m pretty sure nobody saw this “customer need” two years ago. A prepaid customer was a “necessary-evil” in the mobile equation, in which the monthly subscription (still) is King! Well, not anymore! Everybody can have data.

And with this “need”, a new set of problems appear; are we charged by KB? Or by 10 KB chunks? Are we paying a daily subscription for data-roaming? And if yes, how much (not that much, “just” 25€/day for 50 MB or so!)? All these questions lead us to a single reply: control. Data control.

Say… 3G Watchdog for Android. Like I said, a “not-so-simple” app, with a beautiful design and a very hand U.I. I learned from the description in the Market that it guards you against costly Internet over-charges, it monitors your 3G/EDGE/GPRS data consumption by showing an icon in the Status bar which is gradually turning from green to orange and red in according to your settings for the data usage. Personally, I already have extra two icons besides the standard ones in the Status bar and I don’t need another one – you can switch this one on or off in the app settings as you wish. One interesting feature is the ability to auto-disable the mobile data by using external apps used to monitor your energy consumption: APNdroid and/or Juice Defender, which also sports a link button in order to install this last app! Cool integration, huh?

Also, the application will predict your overall consumption based on your usage history, letting you know all the time if you’re gonna go over the allotment or not. You can choose a graph, a text based info or a table for that. Or all three of them complementing each other! It will also count the roaming usage, the billable vs measured consumption and can disregard the uploaded data if your operator won’t take that into account. (Multiple) SIM changes can be tracked.

Two widgets are also available; I personally don’t use them but if your budget is tight or your data plan is small, you should definitely reserve a spot for one of those.

On a more personal note, I had to seek support from Mr. Richard Gruet and I have to say I am impressed: he replied within 2 hours with clear explanations. This is what makes an app perfect: support.

This app is a must-have and it’s free! There’s also a Pro version with more features and carrying a small fee.

Time is flying. And while we can’t control that, we can always try to coordinate our actions as good as possible in order to be efficient. And while owning a smartphone enables you to organize your life better (providing there’s willingness to do that, of course!), out-of-the-box products don’t offer all the tools you need to be very efficient.

That’s why we have the Market and that’s why we have widgets. Widgets are small programs, simpler than the usual apps. They mirror certain functions and they perform certain actions on your homescreen. The best part is that they don’t require launching the app, allowing you to interact/modify information right there and right then.

In order to be up-to-date I use a nice combo I tested for quite sometime now: Pure Calendar widget and Astrid Task/To Do List. Together they fulfill my basic (maybe “advanced”?) needs in order to be as efficient as possible thru the day. I will mention a few important features for each of the two above and post screenshots and links if you want to find out more. I use this app review to point out Android enthusiasts towards interesting apps – it’s called American Help and it means YOU need to dig some more if you want more information!

Pure Calendar Widget:

• support for corporate (Exchange), Touchdown and regular e-mail
• support for task applications, most notable being gTasks and Astrid
• various skins and themes

Astrid Task/To Do List:

• easy task input
• simple U.I, big buttons, ease of use, all important fields in one screen
• syncs with Remember the Milk if you need it (which in turn syncs with Gmail)
• backups available, both Import and Export

On February 10th, we were hit with the 2.0 version of the official Twitter client. I’ve always liked the official client, its clean U.I and its simplicty so hard to come-by from the other competitors.

While the 1st version did the job for the average user, we, the hardcore users were left in the dark. I had some issues: lots of bugs, only one account supported, no “Reply to All” option when more than one user was mentioned in a tweet just to name a few. Also, at the time I was using Seesmic for Android, which provides a robust Twitter client (see a VS here), really clean and simple while packed with features. After trying the official version for a week or so, I settled for Seesmic – many features compared to the official version, just like I thought in the beginning.

So what does 2.0 brings? Lots of bug fixes (and introducing lots of others like inability to refresh automatically), @username auto-complete, threaded messages, improved searches, multi-account support, redesigned screens and my favorite “Reply To All” feature added.

So is it better? Yes, it is! A lot better! Yes! Would it be usable for a heavy-user? One requesting as many features as possible in the palm of his/her hands? Yes, it would. This version brings the desktop features in a cleaner, simpler form to your smartphone. Another nice thing is that the app is integrated in the OS, which means your system won’t be under strain when running it in the background. We all know how fast a battery can be depleted by a poorly implemented/designed app.

But I’m a step further now. So I won’t be using the 2.0 Twitter for Android version. And not because there is a better Twitter app  out there. But because Tweetcaster has a nifty feature TFA doesn’t: filters. This app has a Pro version I actually use. While this app is not up to par with TWA or Seesmic for Android in terms of U.I, it sports the same many features and works as fast as those aforementioned.

I’ll write soon about Tweetcaster Pro because it’s one helluva Twitter app!

In February 2009 I left the Symbian UIQ 3.0 O.S for BlackBerry. Of course, some of my friends knowing me and using more or less the same Symbian platform ( UIQ 3.0 and/or S40, S60 Nokia) were skeptical: “BlackBerry is a professional platform, a closed and rigid environment, no way you can thrive under that rock” they said. What they didn’t know is that at the time R.I.M already decided to go forward with the plan to conquer a new kind of customer with the multimedia phones: the much-debated Storm 1, the Bold 9000, eventualy the Javelin and the Tour later on. Platforms are becoming more and more multimedia and social cause that’s where the money is today.

And that was exactly what made me go first BlackBerry and now,  Android: while the UIQ 3.0 was great and rich in applications (O.K, maybe not so rich by today’ standards or by iPhone/Android markets standards), it lacked the new applications for the social media. The only reason I kept it until February 2009 is the hacking community. They “developed” the O.S much more than Symbian itself did and a lot more than the developers did. While BlackBerry had all these applications, it lacked the diversity one enjoys on Android and iPhone.  In BlackBerry’s case, the developers deserted the booming wonderful community formed around R.I.M’s products. Or maybe I am wrong; I know there aren’t many developers pushing-out BlackBerry applications. The applications themselves are rare and expensive. The price is the main issue: while an average app for Blackberry is 2.99$ (price imposed by BlackBerry App World) , the others go as low as 0.99$. This happens EXACTLY because there aren’t many developers (anymore) and the remaining ones they profit on the fact that the demand surged. But even with this situation, the BlackBerry users aren’t benefiting much. For almost 2 years I look for a working Call Filter aplication. Because I was paying for it, I asked for a few features (existing already on Symbian S40 and UIQ 3.0 for years!) like:

• accept all calls
• reject all calls
• accept phone-book only
• drop unwanted calls and/or mute the ringer
• reject Black List numbers and accept White List numbers
• automatic profile switch based on time schedule

And that was about it. All of the above were supported by other applications, most of them free or charging very little money. And I’ve tried half of those while using the Sony-Ericsson P1i and afterwards, even on BlackBerry. On BlackBerry, I couldn’t find a satisfactory application. Most of them are very basic and extremely expensive – 19,95$ I had to pay for mCall Manager Light (sic!), the only one working as it should but without the scheduling.  After I updated from 4.7 version OS to 5.0 OS, the app stopped working and when they did update it (3 months later) it wasn’t working properly anymore. This experience sums-up all my experiences with BlackBerry applications.

And then there is the support issue: being so fragmentary as it is, the BlackBerry application market is divided between some developers interested in keeping the customer happy and the rest. The rest don’t give a shit about the customer. It’s enough if you buy it once and never comeback ever again, 10$ from each customer is more than enough for a single application. I bet there are a lot of  “developers” hitting the market only once with one single (bad) product and then move on to another platforms; from what I’ve been told developing for BlackBerry is neither cool or money-rewarding.

And now it’s time for a new challenge: the Android O.S. I’ve been playing for a few months with a T-Mobile Pulse but in order to enjoy the full-power of the new O.S, I had to go full way. And I chose the HTC Desire
. While it lacks stamina ( my usage will kill the battery in just a bit over 5 hours!), I have faith in the platform and its ability to deliver a better product later on with rooting, custom ROMs and Froyo later on.