Jon Mallin
Miio is a mixture of every hot property on the web right now. It is a little like Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and FriendFeed. In other words, it is a social networking site. Do we really need another? The answer appears to be a resounding YES. Miio brings in the best of each of the hot properties and it is really gaining traction. The service is so polished that TheNextWeb entitled a post “Early adopted alert: miio is here, and it’s looking really slick.”
I’m a big fan of Google Buzz and I’ve been vocal about it. The CEO of miio, Richard Lusk, is also a Google Buzz fan. I’m not alone in saying that I plan to shift some of my social networking time to miio.
I’m not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel. There’s an excellent review of miio in the blogosphere entitled, “Why miio isn’t Twitter or Facebook: And why this is a good thing.” The post contains a video demo and a terrific overview of the service. It’s recommended reading.
If you check out miio, add my profile to your network. It’s at http://miio.com/jon.
Some LEGO, an Android phone with a good camera and a skilled programmer came together to solve a 7 x 7 x 7 Rubik’s Cube. Impressive.
[via SingularityHub / only ~ 3,000 YouTube views at time of this post]
Today Verizon announced the launch of it V Cast App Store on Blackberry smartphones. This will go head-to-head with RIM’s own Blackberry App World and Handango. Apps purchased from V Cast are billed to a subscriber’s phone bill. The V Cast App Store is currently available on the BlackBerry Bold 9650, Storm 9550, Curve 8530 and Tour 9630 and will be coming in the next couple weeks to the forgotten devices… the Storm 9530 and Curve 8330. Want to check out the V Cast App Store? Verizon’s making it easy by pushing an icon to your Blackberry.
Why am I mildly excited about this? 1. Blackberry App World and Handango are both rather crummy. 2. RIM’s not dead and might not die as fast as a lot of us were predicting. Some amazing reports have come out about the upcoming WebKit browser that will be featured in OS 6.0. Apparently, it scores higher on certain standard Acid tests than Android 2.1 and Apple’s Mobile Safari. While the browser advancement is good news, Blackberry still lags the two giants, Android and iOS, in app development by an impressively wide margin.
Android offers users the ability to return paid apps within 24 hours for a full refund if they’re unsatisfied. While V Cast does not appear to have a similar return policy, it is somewhat less necessary on Blackberry. RIM controls both the hardware and the software on Blackberry phones. With Android, not every app plays nice with every Android device. Because of this problem, returns are sometimes necessary. I returned an app once but all of the other apps I’ve downloaded played nice on my Incredible.
For more information about the Blackberry advancements, including OS 6.0 and the new browser, I highly recommend Salomondrin’s site. He is generally the blogosphere’s starting point of all reliable Blackberry rumors and he’s been kind enough to pay us a visit and comment on a post about his 9800 prediction he made back before the holidays.
[via Official Verizon Press Release]
Boy Genius Report just posted the Verizon summer device catalog. Oddly, it lists the Droid X as “Coming Soon” (yeah, like tomorrow). The images are hard to make out but if you blow it up really big, it’s legible. Here are the specs for the Droid 2, which are somewhat underwhelming:
- Google Maps and Navigation
- 8 GB storage and 512 MB RAM
- Memory Expandable to 16 GB (really 32, but we’ll cut them some slack)
- QWERTY physical keyboard, (unnecessary)
- 5.0 MP camera
- 3G Mobile Hotspots
- Note: NO HD video capture. This probably requires better than a 5.0 MP camera.
The Samsung phones that are launching on a bunch of carriers will beat the pants off this phone. And, if you require a QWERTY physical keyboard, the Samsung Galaxy S Pro model has one.
RIM has released another Blackberry OS 6 video. I thought the first video and OS 6 stunk. This one, however, is pretty good and shows some features of OS 6.0 we haven’t seen before like better integration with social networks and the RSS reader (they bought Viigo, perhaps to help with this project). For video #3, I have some suggestions: What about the calendar? How about the 3rd party apps?
I still believe that RIM needs to get on board with Android but I read an interesting piece in BetaNews suggesting RIM will stay competitive with enterprise customers much like Nextel has. Nonetheless, RIM plus Android would be a combination that would strike fear in other device manufacturers because, sans Storm 1 and Tour, RIM builds really good hardware. Toss in a proprietary email app and some method of using RIM’s email push patents, and RIM has a red hot product. Will this happen? Not anytime soon and probably never.
When I started this blog in November 2009, I wrote a post entitled, “Dear Google, Please Allow Users to Merge Accounts or Build Account Switching into Chrome.” Well, chances are good that nobody read it because the blog was new. However, it appears that others had similar wishes. Google is now testing a system that allows users to log in to more than Google Account without running two different browsers (or an Incognito window in Chrome), according to Google Operating System blog. This is a simple solution to a problem that has been bothering me for a long time. I user various Google services on two different Google accounts. Some of the services can be used by both (e.g., calendar) but others cannot (e.g., Gmail and Adsense). Logging in and out of accounts is time consuming and aggravating. Hopefully this feature rolls out to everyone soon. “Dear Google, Thanks in Advance.”
Google dropped a bomb today on the mobile app market… and Apple. It made App Inventor for Android available to the public, after one year of beta testing it in classrooms. It allows people who don’t know how to code (like me) to make Android apps. It’s entirely web-based and it seems that apps can access every feature of Android phones, including GPS, bluetooth, etc.
The primary area where Apple outshines Android is in app count and, arguably, app quality (footnote 1: better Google integration with Android tips the scales the other way for me). The past six months have seen the number of Android apps skyrocket. Current unofficial counts have reached 100,000. With App Inventor rolling out to the general public, I expect Android to approach Apple’s App Store count, roughly 225,000, within the next year (footnote 2: a much higher percentage of Android apps are free than the percentage of Apple apps).While many of App Inventor apps will be novelty items and unappealing apps, it looks like App Inventor is capable of producing some really powerful apps.
You must register through Google to gain access to App Inventor.
Here’s a video that illustrates how easy it is to program a basic app with App Inventor:
Click to Zoom
I have been using a Droid X for the last three days. I’ve read the reviews that are out in the blogosphere and want to take a different approach. I’ll simply compare the Droid X with the HTC Incredible that I’ve used since early May. I’m very satisfied with the Incredible but ultimately I conclude: While they’re both great phones, the Droid X is the better phone.
I wanted to compare apples to apples as much as possible. I had both phones running LauncherPro Beta for the home screen, instead of Sense UI (Incredible) and some form of blur (Droid X). I prefer LauncherPro Beta to both so this was a “real world” modification to the phones. I used the phones in similar settings to compare antennas and Wifi reception.
Hardware
Form Factor and Ergonomics — Both phones feel solid but the Droid X weighs in at ~5.5 ounces vs. Incredible at ~4.5 ounces. It’s not enough difference that you need to wear suspenders to keep your pants up but the extra weight is noticeable. The Droid X has a massive 4.3″ screen vs. the Incredible’s adequate 3.7″. This makes the Droid X a considerably larger phone overall (basically, Motorola and Verizon’s answer to the HTC Evo). I was asked on Google Buzz whether the phone fits comfortably in a pocket. It does. I found the larger screen easier to type and Swype on. (Swype is preinstalled on Droid X, a nice touch (pun intended).) Droid X has a dedicated camera button and physical Menu, Home, Back and Search keys, oddly in that order. The Incredible lacks a camera button and has virtual or flush Home, Menu, Back and Search keys. I like the feel of the physical keys better for those functions. The Incredible has an unnecessary optical trackpad that I almost forgot about because I use it so infrequently. Winner: Droid X, primarily due to massive screen size. Admittedly, this is a highly subjective assessment and some may prefer the Incredible because it is smaller.
Screen Quality — Both screens are very responsive and do multitouch well. I couldn’t distinguish the screens based on responsiveness. To compare the displays, I loaded Beautiful Live Weather wallpaper on both phones. Side by side, the blue on the Incredible’s AMOLED was much deeper or richer than the “washed out” powdery blue on the Droid X. I initially concluded that colors on the Droid X were “washed out.” However, I crowdsourced an answer and Bud Gibson and Mark Richards on Google Buzz directed me to PC Mag’s comprehensive screen review. The review found that the Incredible oversaturates colors by 37 percent and the Droid X undersaturates by 6 percent, which means the Droid X has a more accurate display of colors. In fact, the Droid X has the most accurate display of colors of all of the phones tested, including the iPhone 4. Nonetheless, I showed the screens side by side to two tech-savvy people who both preferred the oversaturated Incredible. This whole issue may be somewhat of a red herring because of the shortage of Samsung AMOLED screens that are used in the Incredible; the later batches of Incredibles are rumored to have Sony TFT screens similar to the TFT screen used in the Droid X. Winner: IMO, Droid X for accurately displaying colors vs. AMOLED Incredibles. However, inconclusive because information about future Incredible screens is unconfirmed.
Antennas — The Droid X receives better signals than the Incredible. In the same location where my Incredible regularly drops calls, the Droid X did not. This was not a fluke; the results were repeatable. The Droid X also appeared to obtain stronger Wifi signals. Winner: Droid X.
Sound Quality — Both phones sound good and the ear pieces are loud. I don’t think a good argument can be made that one is better than another. Winner: Tie.
Battery — Battery technology really hasn’t kept pace with advances in smartphones. Battery life is probably the chief complaint about smartphones, excluding the highly-publicized complaints about the iPhone 4 dropping its signal. If I can make it through the day without a charge, I’m thrilled. The Incredible usually goes the 8-10 hours with light to moderate use. On my first full day with the Droid X, it went 12 hours with about 1.5 hours of heavy Wifi use and 0.5 hours of talk and still had more than 20 percent of its charge remaining. One reason could be that the Droid X has battery manager software baked into the OS. Also, the battery in the Droid X has more milliamps than the Incredible’s battery (1540 vs. 1300). Winner: Droid X by a large margin. Furthermore, for those requiring even more juice, an extended battery for the Droid X will be available.
Storage — Both phones have 8 GB internal and can support up to 32 GB on a card. The Droid X comes with a 16 GB card, whereas the Incredible ships with a 2 GB card (which I never received but I already owned a 16 GB). Winner: Droid X wins by a hair because the 16 GB card comes with the phone.
Other — The Droid X has microphones up the wazoo… I believe there are three of them. Frankly, I don’t know what they all do (one is noise cancellation but the purpose of the third is unclear to me) but there must be a reason for them. The Droid X has a HDMI output but it requires some type of adapter that doesn’t come with the phone. I have seen videos of the Incredible outputting to a flat screen but it was by standard video cables, not HDMI. Both phones have 8 megapixel cameras with dual stage LED flashes. I’m not a camera guy so I didn’t futz around with the cameras but the Droid X can record in 720P and the Incredible can’t. Some say a software update will enable it in the Incredible. Winner: Droid X because it has slightly more bells and whistles.
Software
Both run Android 2.1, contrary to early rumors that Droid X would launch with 2.2. The Droid X is expected to receive a 2.2 upgrade by late summer. That’s based on official word from Verizon. The best estimate on the Incredible was a statement by HTC that it will receive 2.2 before the end of the year. This may mean tomorrow or it could mean December 31st.
Stock UI — Sense UI might be a little better than Motorola’s blur. In any event, I recommend replacing almost every item that can be replaced on the phone, including the UI. You can read my recommendations here. Winner: They both lose to LauncherPro Beta. :P By the way, I noticed that on the Droid X there is a red indicator that highlights the cursor in text fields. This was helpful in locating the cursor and it continued to display even when I changed the UI. This is a nifty improvement.
3G Hotspots– Droid X can create a 3G hotspot to support up to five Wifi devices. The Incredible may get this feature by a software update. (This optional feature will cost $20 per month.) This feature is easy to use. You simply key in a hotspot password for the other devices and toggle it on. Winner: Droid X.
DLNA– The Droid X supports it and the Incredible doesn’t. This is a fantastic feature and underplayed by other reviewers. Digital Living Network Alliance is a trade organization that has created a protocol of sorts by which various devices can share media. For more information, the Wikipedia page is pretty good or visit DLNA’s page. You can play music from your Droid X on your computer or vice versa. You can also transfer music wirelessly from one device to another if you are using the same Wifi router. PS3s and many other devices support DLNA (Wikipedia has a list) and I think you’ll be hearing more about this technology. Maybe we’ll have cloud-based music solutions later this year but until then DLNA streaming is great. Winner: Droid X.
Pre-Installed Apps — Both phones come with some bloatware that cannot be removed. Other than Swype, which comes on the Droid X, I would prefer not having any of the other apps on either phone. (You might find the Blockbuster app on the Droid X appealing but I didn’t.) Winner: They both lose because bloatware sucks. :P
Conclusion
I’m a satisfied Incredible owner but, all in all, the Incredible doesn’t seem to do anything better than the Droid X. That said, I’m not paying full retail to upgrade to a Droid X. If I had upgrade eligibility or if I were a new Verizon customer, I would choose the Droid X. Speaking of upgrade eligibility, check out this promotion: if your Verizon contract expires anytime in 2010, you can upgrade to the Droid X at the subsidized price, which is competitive at $199.
My office building is practically a vacuum for mobile phone signals. Nobody on any carrier can maintain a clear call for more than 30 seconds or so. I eventually gave up using my cell phone at work and relied on a landline. After a few agonizing months of missing cell phone calls and clicking on Google Voice to read voicemail, I decided to try out a Verizon Network Extender.
I won’t pretend to know exactly how this thing works but it takes a cell phone call that is initiated to a tower and turns it into a VOIP call using a standard wireless router. These devices are also known as “femtocells.” The device was easy to connect but it needs to be placed in a location that receives a decent tower signal. My office wouldn’t work but I tried plugging it into a router in an office down the hall and, after waiting about twenty minutes, it locked on to the tower signal. My first phone call was a success. I did more testing and it worked flawlessly for every call I placed or received. Calls were crystal clear with no garbling. I never dropped a call with the Network Extender. More than one Verizon phone can connect to the Network Extender simultaneously. Presumably it saturates the bandwidth at some point but I only tested it with two simultaneous calls.
Verizon Wireless sells the Network Extenders for $199.99 and does not assess a monthly service fee. Other carriers have similar offerings but some assess a monthly service fee (Sprint, for example). Overall, the Network Extender was easier to connect than I expected (quite unlike installing a router) and it performed exactly as promised. For more information, visit Verizon’s website.
P.S. I’ve been using a Droid X for two days and will post up a review on Monday. Will I end up eating my words from a prior review based on specs and reading that compared it to my HTC Droid Incredible?
Here’s a spattering of what I’ve been reading about Android lately:
- There’s a Droid X scavenger hunt going on to help promote Verizon’s flagship device. Certificates for 21 Droid X Androids are hidden around the country. Clues are being posted to twitter @DroidLanding. The scavenger hunt runs from July 7 through July 15. [via Android Phone Fans]
- The HTC Desire, hugely popular in Europe, is coming to North America. It passed the FCC certification and will end up on one or more of the following carriers: Bell, Telus, Rogers, and AT&T. The Desire is quite similar to the Nexus One with the primary difference being an optical trackpad instead of a trackball. [via DroidDog]
- I’ve touted AppBrain before. It’s a terrific front-end for the Android Market that allows you to browse the market on your computer and then load up apps on your phone. You can also share your app lists with others. Here’s my list. Now, AppBrain supports pushing apps to your phone. You’ll need to install an app called Fast Web Installer.
- Adobe has been showing off Flash on the Droid X. Here’s the video:
[via Android Phone Fans]
- The HTC Incredible, my phone, is seeming more and more like yesterday’s news (though it has specs meeting the rumored Android 3.0 Gingerbread minimum requirements). Not only is Verizon shifting its marketing from the Incredible to the Droid X, it is allowing customers who have ordered Incredibles but not yet received them to switch to the Droid X. I speculate that was done to appease those who are up in arms over the screen change on the Incredible. Future batches of Incredibles will have a Super TFT screen manufactured by Sony instead of the brilliant AMOLED screen made by Samsung. Basically, Samsung is hogging its 3.7″ screens for use in the Samsung Galaxy S which now has about a half dozen names and will launch on almost every carrier in some form. I’m being lazy with citations here but these stories were all well publicized. Many of them appeared in BGR.
This is a two-parter, neither truly shocking. First, there will be no Nexus Two; the Nexus One is the end of the line for Google-sold Android phones for the foreseeable future. Second, the Nexus One was so successful that the Nexus Two is unnecessary. (You may be scratching your head in bewilderment at this point.) Here’s the quote from Eric Schmidt:
The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did. It was so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one. We would view that as positive but people criticized us heavily for that. I called up the board and said: ‘Ok, it worked. Congratulations – we’re stopping’. We like that flexibility, we think that flexibility is characteristic of nimbleness at our scale.
While I didn’t predict that Google would nix the Nexus Two (there were rumors swirling that N2 would be a business-oriented Android device), I agree that the Nexus One was a smashing success. I wrote back in March:
[The Nexus One] set the bar by which other Android devices are measured. Google wasn’t looking to necessarily outsell the upcoming HTC Incredible, for example. I believe it was simply looking to protect the brand by demoing Android on well designed hardware and avoid regulating the ecosystem it has fought so hard to keep “open.” Think of the Nexus One as the model by which Android should be measured. That’s what Google wants you to do.
Viewed from this lens, the Nexus One was an overwhelming success. I have come across many enthusiastic Nexus One owners on Buzz who are evangelistic in their love for Android. The Nexus One was the prototypical Android device that propelled the platform forward. It comes as no surprise to me that Google is declaring mission accomplished.
Soon the HTC Incredible will receive an update that enables mobile hotspots (see pic), allows video recording at 720P (a resolution of 1280 x 720), and changes to the boot animation. The update is also likely to patch some security issues, including the well publicized problem that a factory reset does not remove all thumbnails from the browser. Some have suggested that the grounding issue will be fixed which causes the screen to be relatively unresponsive when it in a car dock.
Solutions to the following problems would be helpful, though are not currently rumored to be included:
- Antenna issues. It may be possible to improve reception with an update.
- Short battery life. We can always hope, although I’m getting a day’s worth of use on one charge by running Advanced Task Cleaner Pro (free; Rating: 4.53/5.00). Phooey to those who say that task killers don’t improve battery life.
- Two bluetooth issues. With a Motorola T505 the phone (1) regularly disconnects from the bluetooth signal and (2) skips when streaming music while the phone is in motion.
In other good news, the HTC Incredible appears to meet the leaked system requirements for Android 3.0, which is expected later this year. Apparently a 1 GHz or better processor is required and at least 512K of RAM.
Also, if you suffered a painful wait to receive your incredible because of the shortages, you are likely to receive a $25 gift card from Big Red.
Here’s the teaser boot animation that Verizon recently leaked:
The PPCBlog hit this one out of the ballpark. Check it out here: http://www.ppcblog.com/how-google-works/
[If you are on the main page of the blog, click the title of this post to load a clickable link.]
[via Ryan IT Lab on Buzz]
File this rumor in the “quite possible” folder. It comes by way of Kevin Rose, co-founder and CEO of Digg. He tweeted to his 1.1 million followers:
Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon “Google Me”, very credible source
TechMiso picked up the tweet and the rumor is gaining steam on Google Buzz.
I believe there is room in the Google ecosystem for a new social network. While Buzz is still fresh out of the box, it really isn’t ideal for keeping up with friends and family. Buzz is somewhat more like Twitter in terms of the relationships between users, although discussions tend to be more fulsome than those on Twitter. Google does already have a Facebook like service, Orkut. However, Orkut is significantly behind Facebook in terms of features and it never really caught on outside of Brazil and India. Some point to Wave as a social network of sorts but it’s really a different animal. Wave is more like a collaboration service that better suits business purposes than social purposes.
If there really is a Google Me, I’m really curious what the service will look like. Surely, it will incorporate many Facebook features but I would expect some significant departures from the mold, and not just better privacy settings. Surely, there’s room for improvement upon the Facebook format.
I believe the biggest obstacle to any Facebook competitor is that many Facebook users have invested significant time amassing their group of Facebook friends. Even if an large group decided to defect from Facebook, it’s not easy to export Facebook contacts to Google. It actually requires a Yahoo! account to pull from Facebook and export to CSV file. From there, the CSV file can be imported into Gmail. Instructions can be found here.
I’m hoping Kevin is right. It’s about time someone shakes things up and competes meaningfully with Facebook.
You may have noticed that I have been blogging less often. Before I was averaging around two posts a day and now I’m down to a few per week. (During this slow down, page views and unique visitors have held steady. Thank you, Google.) The topic I covered the most frequently was mobile devices (mostly smartphones) and that will continue. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to cover mobile devices for a few reasons:
- Information overload makes blogging phones difficult. It seems like a new phone is announced or leaked almost every few days. Virtually every major tech blog now covers mobile devices heavily. Bloggers who rely on reading other blogs for post ideas need to sift through thousands of posts a day to stay on top of the latest developments. If you have interests in other topics too, you can expect thousands of additional posts to show up in your RSS reader. Unless you blog full time, it is difficult to stay abreast of current topics.
- The mobile device blogging space is becoming increasingly saturated; is it possible to have a unique view of the iPhone 4 reception problems? I suppose but it’s unlikely. Is it worthwhile to write the 1,001st post about the HTC Evo 4G’s battery life? Hell, there’s probably an entire blog or two dedicated to the HTC Evo 4G’s battery life.
- Products are less differentiated because Android is spreading like wildfire. Let’s face it, comparing an Android 2.1 to an Android 2.1 isn’t the most exciting thing in the world. If they’re running the same OS, then the phones will produce a somewhat similar experience. Sure, processing power, camera quality and other factors matter but high-end mobile devices seem to have much more in common than in the past. Frankly, it is difficult to remain interested in comparing somewhat similar devices, e.g., a Droid 2 and a Samsung Galaxy S Pro. Maybe Blackberry OS 6.0 will shake things up a bit but I see it more of a copycat OS than something revolutionary.
- The “leaked” photos scene is the modus operandi of the industry. Almost every major manufacturer and carrier seems to intentionally leak photos and specs far in advance of launch. (One notable exception is Apple.) This is becoming increasingly transparent and Jonathan Geller (a/k/a Boy Genius) estimated that 70% of leaks are planned. So, if you want to be in the inner circle of reporting phone leaks, then you need to cozy up to device manufacturers and carriers like Geller. Bottom line: you’re not going to get your hands on a Droid X before Engadget. Of course, you can go the remaining 30% route and hang out in German beer gardens located near Cupertino, CA hoping for the next Apple slip-up.
These are just some of the reasons why I’ve been blogging less. Other reasons include being busier with other activities and shifting my blogging to Buzz ratio in favor of Buzz.
I probably bit off more than I could chew when I launched this blog in November. The idea was to write about anything tech that interests me. By doing so, I have become interested in more and more tech topics. Going forward, I expect to continue at my current blogging pace but to try to come up with unique posts and share more personal opinions (instead of regurgitating a bunch of leaked photos and planted rumors). I’m my own editor and can shift the direction of the blog at any time without running the decision up a flagpole. That’s one of the things I like best about blogging.
