Froywoes

I was very pleased to see that google released froyo quickly as it reaffirmed my commitment to having a google experience phone. If I had a HTC phone I would still be waiting for them to update their senseui to run on froyo before it was released.

I have being using a cynanogen 5.06 rom on my nexus because of 3g issues. Recently the nexus has been hanging especially when the battery was low so I decided to try froyo. I completed a nandroid backup so I could restore everything back quickly.

Well what a bad decision this was....?

Because froyo is new half of my paid applications don't appear in the marketplace. Then any applications I have installed must be unstable because the nexus is just hanging on the launcher force closing all of the time. It was nice to see the ram boost given by froyo by enabling the second bank of ram as does the cynanogen rom.

But Google should have warned both people and developers that applications would either need updating to run on the new os even if you don't use the new features. They should have also given more time to ensure this happened before the release of froyo to allow time for the changes just like Apple is doing with v4 iphone os.

Then my nandroid backup of the cynanogen rom must be corrupted as any video playback doesn't work now.

What this means for me is now a unusable phone as I have to invest time to rebuild my nexus with a cynanogen rom again or wait until my applications are supported in froyo.

Either way I am not happy about this and am now back on my n900 contemplating either an iphone 4g or desire....?

When a sat nav is useless like CoPilot

I have been the proud user of CoPilot for android since my HTC magic. Recently I am using it on my nexus one and have to admit I want something else.

Take a trip recently to Reading it frequently lost its signal. The live traffic was only reporting narrow lanes even though the I had been in my current jam for over one hour and when/if it detects a traffic issue it expects you to manually route around it rather than just get on and reroute like other sat nav solutions I have used.

Again relying on CoPilot to get me to Chester tonight meant losing its GPS even though when selecting the dialog message it can see 8 satellites and is communicating with them. Plus opening Google maps at the same time CoPilot still cannot find the GPS signal  yet Google maps does.

I have put these questions to CoPilot support and have yet to hear why their product just fails. Thankfully I have my n900 with Sygic maps with me for the return home.

Satellite navigation is something I expect to work especially considering I have paid for it. Even back in the days when I ran tomtom on Windows Mobile 3 with an externally connected Garmin GPS it worked, so why not today on better hardware.

Personally I cannot wait for Google navigation to come to the uk. For the interim if CoPilot cannot fix their bugs and sort out the automatic routing the last journey it will be planning will be to the garbage can.