TAG | Android 1.5
After reviewing what appears to be a internal flier sent from T-Mobile to retail partners, the previously rumored Motorola Zeppelin will be henceforth known as the CLIQ XT. The CLIQ XT will most likely be carrying Android 1.5 with MOTOBLUR upon it’s release March 10th, and has no keyboard unlike it’s namesake, the CLIQ. It will have eXtra Touch only. Sorry, I had to try and determine what XT could mean. Continue Reading…
Even more evidence of an HTC built myTouch with a physical qwerty keyboard are surfacing this morning. Following a number of links back from a story on tmonews, took me all the way to Cellpassion who somehow found a link to the user agent string on one of HTC’s websites that might be for the myTouch Slide, or whatever they may end up calling it. Continue Reading…
Motorola Backflip
Motorola announced during CES a new type of Android phone with a “reverse flip” QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard of the phone faces out when the hinged phone is closed, and behind the screen is a trackpad like feature they have dubbed backtrack. It also features Android 1.5 with MOTOBLUR and will be upgraded to Android 2.1. Continue Reading…
Camangi has just finished up their official product website for the WebStation, a 7-inch high res (800×480) touchscreen MID powered by Android 1.5 running off a 624 Mhz Marvell PXA303 CPU. The WebStation is much like a large cell phone without the 3G connectivity built in, though that can be solved with a USB 3G dongle. It does come with Wifi and a GPS receiver built in, so you can surf off a hotspot with ease. It’s a little lacking in the memory department with 128MB RAM and 256MB of ROM, but it does come with an 8GB microSD card to help store your photos, music and videos. One of the main features that Camangi is touting is an eBook reader app to read all your different eBook sources. Also included are two speakers for stereo listening and a microphone for all your VoIP needs. It also includes support of a USB keyboard too and has a little kickstand. It could make for a nice little web tablet. Finally, Camangi has introduced their own Android Market for “5 inch to 9 inch Android devices”.
via Camangi
Well, after the announcement from Google that the Navigation app would be available to all Android devices with Android 1.6 and above, people with Android 1.5 are feeling a little more sad. At first it was the updated market, a little speed boost and the updated search box that the Android 1.5 users were pining for. But now, they are lost on the street without Google Navigation as well. I exaggerate, but not by much. Android 1.5 was released in April of 2009, just about 9 short months ago. Android 1.6 came out just 3 months ago, and Android 2.0 was released earlier this month with the Droid and then bits are showing up in the open source project. That’s a very fast release cycle. It’s got some hardware/firmware developers just trying to play catch up with their custom UI offerings. Let’s dive into the wacky world of custom UIs for Android and see just what that means to the users. Continue Reading…
I posted last week about a Sprint Hero ROM update. It was a small update at about 3.5MB, and at the time there was no official word on what exactly it was supposed to do, but there were rumors it was focused at fixing the SMS issue where the phone would not sleep after an SMS message was sent. This, of course, resulted in poor battery life. Well, today I was at the Sprint website for the Hero and found the official changes made in the update. For clarity, the Hero is still Android 1.5, this did not update the Firmware version, just the software version. Uh, well, that sort of makes sense. Here is the official statement: Continue Reading…
Engadget has a breaking report with an unboxing and initial thoughts on the Samsung Behold II, which will be making it’s way to T-Mobile on Nov 18th. Price has been estimated at $199 on contract. So, what makes the Behold II worth looking at? For starters it comes with a 3.2″ AMOLED screen and it does have a nice 5MP camera with flash and a dedicated camera button, which includes 1/2 press for focusing. That’s a nice addition, since some of the Androids I’ve played with are aggravating when it comes to try to take a picture. Engadget reports that it feels solid, heavy in a good way and thin, but not super thin. I have to agree that it’s a very well styled phone, but much like I was worried, they stated the TouchWiz interface does little to add to the phone. In fact they state it feels like it runs just slightly slower than stock Android phones. TouchWiz is running on top of Android 1.5, so maybe when 1.6 or 2.0 rolls out it’ll feel much better. For those keeping score at home, this makes T-Mobile’s 4th Android phone. All the remaining specs on this phone seem pretty standard, Wifi, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS etc.
Check out the Gallery on Engadget and their article.
Verizon announced today that beginning Nov 6th, you can purchase an HTC built Droid Eris for $99 on a two year contract. As expected, it comes with the Sense UI made famous by the Heroes. This makes the Verizon offering in that phone category $99 (after $100 MiR) while the Sprint version runs you $180. I smell a little competition here. Come on Sprint, let’s see what you’ve got for us. No word on the Android version exactly, but I’m willing to go on the record and say it is Android 1.5 for now. Here are some specs directly from the press release.
The unique HTC Sense experience found on DROID ERIS by HTC is supported by an array of the latest mobile features, including:
- 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen and trackball interface
- 5.0 megapixel auto focus camera
- Expandable memory with pre-installed 8 GB microSD™ card (up to 16 GB supported)
- Supports USB mass storage
- Bluetooth®, Wi-Fi and 3.5 mm headset connectivity
- Integrated GPS and a digital compass with a sensor that enables the phone to know what direction it is facing
- Smart dialer for simplified dialing by name, number or initials
- Full HTML browser with Flash Lite capabilities
- Seamless compatibility with Google™ services like Google Maps™, Gmail™, Google Search™ and more
We are really starting to see a well rounded offering of phones on at least three of the top four major carriers in the US. It’s looking to be a great holiday for Android.
It was rumored, but now we might have some more solid info. Leaked documents that explain the Droid Eris will be available Nov 6th at $99. Again, this Android phone has almost identical specs to that of the Hero for Sprint. It’s got a standard 528Mhz Qualcomm processor, 320×480 screen and like Sprint’s Hero Android 1.5. Again, we’ve already heard from HTC themself that they have Android 2.0 in the house and they are working to get it on Hero’s soon, so I imagine this will include the Eris as it also sports the Sense UI. What is interesting is the fact Verizon has not seen fit to even announce this phone yet, because they feel the Motorola Droid is the more important phone while the Eris is almost like a secondary little brother. Of course, $99 for an Eris versus $180 for the Hero makes an interesting case, but the cost of service between Sprint and Verizon should be considered too.
via Engadget
It looks to me that Google has abandoned their own icon design guidelines for Launcher icons. I remember a while back reading through some of the original dev guidelines for UI and one particular page that I enjoyed was the Icon Design Guidelines. It has a really obscure and very detailed requirements list for creating a launcher icon. I also noticed that almost no one followed it after looking at horrible icon after horrible icon for apps appear in the market. Don’t get me wrong, if you have a great app with a horrible icon, it doesn’t mean it’s not good, but certainly a good looking app icon can go a long way for first impressions, especially with the Market from 1.5 or below. With the inclusion of screen shots in the newer Donut and beyond market, the app icon is less critical, but still something I will look at. Call me obsessive, but I don’t enjoy opening my Android drawer and finding it filled with ugly or dull app icons. That being said, I also know why no one followed the guideline. Here is just a part of it:
Launcher Icon Design Guideline
Who is really going to go through their icon and ensure it follows that? Apparently, only Google them selves at first. Here are the set of standard app icons included with a vanilla flavor of Android OS v 1.6 and lower.
See, these are all nice and uniform, following the guidelines and they create visually appealing icons, albeit with too much of a cartoonish feel. Well, after viewing some of the Android 2.0 screenshots out there, I noticed all the icons looked different. These are screen shots form a Motorola Droid, the only 2.0 phone out there, and I had asked if they were Moto special icons or generic 2.0 icons, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge these are Android 2.0 icons because the Driod runs a generic Android 2.0. they seem much more simple, loosing the 3D and the cartoonish effect and sticking with a more business like icon.
Launcher Icons from Android 2.0 - Motorola Droid Screenshot
What do you think? Like the new look? Are these the standard icons? Also, for those not on IE or a mobile device, you’ll notice my icons in the website drawer are the older version. I’m going to have to update my icons now as well.