Follow the ISheep

I have decided to put my nexus, n900 and android tablet on EBay to buy some new kit but to also remove the pain these devices are giving me at the moment.

The Nexus with Froyo doesn't work for me because all of my apps aren't available in the App Store or just don't work.

The N900 is still too rough around the edges 6 months on and I believe Nokia alately seem to be distancing themselves from it thus making it a niche product.

The android table whilst cheap needs a higher specification to be of any use.

@gerrymoth on twitter asked well what phone next?

To be honest the HTC Desire looks interesting but I am waiting to see what Apple delivers in the Iphone 4G. I am expecting my gadget sale to be able to fund an Ipad but I am still wary of Iphone OS. Maemo, Symbian and Android have meant I have been PC free for 2 years but the Iphone since the 2G doesn't seem to have moved on because it requires Itunes.

So I am challenging anyone reading this to convert me to Iphone OS and find me applications that allow me to still be independent:

Podcatcher - an application to download podcasts over 3G and be able to play them locally without ever seeing an itunes installation

SMB/WIFI network browser - To allow me to side load files through SMB network browsing that I can use locally on the phone in applications again without the need of a PC and off device conversion

USB Disk Mounting - the ability to mount the local phone storage as a USB disk on a PC without the need for Itunes

I know a simple form of multitasking is coming and I know that Cydia store is available if I jail broke, but out of the box using the stock rom can IPhone OS do this?

The bells and whistles of the UI are great but when you start peeling back can it work how I want rather than having to convert myself back to a PC dependent world.

My fear if I was to revisit IPhone OS again after getting a 2G phone several years ago is whilst it has lots of applications and great hardware I will be expected to conform again rather than the device confirming to what I want.

Knowing that I have expectations of which I don't think are our too extravagant can the IPhone OS do what I want or do I have to become another clone?

Nokia spolit my fun.

Today Alk finally announced Copilot 8 UK Live traffic for Android and several other platforms at £19.99 per year. This is something that I have been waiting for since last year where I really could have done with it a few weeks ago on a long journey. However since it has only come out I had to resort to my trusty Navman S50 with traffic alerts on this particular trip.

I am also waiting on Sygic Mobile Maps for the N900 as the onboard OVI maps isn't really a satellite navigation solution. I believe the application has been submitted to Nokia for the past several weeks for approval but still nothing on when it will be launched or an indication of the actual cost.

Both of these announcements would have meant me rushing to purchase them straight away as I believe traffic announcements for Copilot are necessary and the N900 having an onboard mapping again enhances the use of the device.

However, old news as this is. I recently blew the dust off my old 5800, upgraded the firmware using windows 7 (another story some time) and installed the free Ovi Maps. I originally subscribed for 3 years to Nokia Maps (as it used to be known) when I first got my N95 because it worked out cheaper than getting 1 year. Since the subscription elasped I purchased Garmin Mobile XT for S60 another good satellite navigation program with freentraffic and cameras. So when Nokia announced that Ovi maps would be free my expectations were high but I was anticipating it to be no better then when I had initially subscribed.

Well how wrong could I be, free traffic alerts and rerouting. Free safety camera warnings. 3D landscapes rendering quickly. Lane guidance. It took me on my journey with the 5800 in landscape mode and didn't falter either on the routing, no delays in dispalyed or spoken instructions and the landscape display was large and clear to view the onscreen map.

Now the excitement of copilot and sygic has gone because I now have everything I need albeit in another phone but it is free. I only need to swap my sim as and when required.

So whilst nokia might have spoilt my fun because I really want to test these two software products, I am now getting all these features for free.

I will probably get Sygic for the n900 because it needs the software to make the device more useful especially considering this is now my main device. But I do hope Ovi Maps is extended to the n900 with free navigation.

All of the satellite navigation companies really need to wake up and smell the flowers, At the moment Ovi Maps for me is more cost effective than both Copilot and Sygic mobile maps because I have access to more mapping regions which can be stored on the device and free traffic/safety camera updates. It will be interesting to see how the satellite navigation business pans out in 2010 especially when Google extends their free navigation.

Today, my advice to anyone looking for a satnav is purchase a 5800 or another Nokia phone with free Ovi Maps Navigation.

N900 - To be or not to be?

There are a lot of n900 reviews online talking about specifications of the hardware/software and how all of the applications work to the nth degree of detail. My post is from using the n900 as my main device for a period of 4 weeks (the length of time will become significant later).

Before Christmas 2009, after much deliberation I decided to purchase an N900. The phone was bought through a reseller where the price was competitive with what they where being sold for on eBay. When the phone arrived I promptly unpacked it and charged it up but within 1 hour of use it rebooted. I over looked this and promptly set about configuring the exchange sync, my email accounts and looking at what applications were available. I used various sources from NokiaAddict.com to allow me to access all of the development and testing resources and twitter for recommendations which gave me access to more applications. Previously being an N810 user I was aware of the issues around using test applications and that you might cause the device to become unstable, but I didn't care. For my N810 I have completely repartitioned the internal disk to increase the available installation space which has lead to the device being more usable. Considering I usually push things to the limit the enabling of these repositories was just another "walk in the park" for me.

Over the first few days I began experiencing several reboots a day which initially because the device was new I wasn't worried about but it got the point of becoming annoying. Doing investigations through searching on the web and posting to twitter wasn't really conclusive as there were two camps. People who were returning their n900s for replacements as they believed it was a hardware fault. This went to the extent of people commenting on how long they charged the battery from when the device was first switched on to discussions of battery replacements, battery charging voltages, what types of chargers were being used, the variety and quality of components inside the n900 and even people suggesting it was applications from the testing repositories. Other people were suggesting it was something to do with the device being in the middle of a process and trying to go into idle mode where it would force it to reboot.

The error I was getting of which could be displayed in a command prompt using "cat /proc/bootreason" was wd32_to.


Through following the link I was able to disable enable_off_mode which whilst reduced the battery life as power management had effectively been switched off it made the reboots from 8 a day to 0.

After 12 hours use I also came across another issue related to the reboot count where each time the device reboots due to the above it adds a value of 3 onto the reboot count. When the reboot counts goes over 50 and the phone reboots it will not load the OS, merely sitting at "2nd dot " of the "5 dots". Effectively the n900 was bricked where I had to reload the firmware to restore it. Again there was a fix for the reboot count. Recently I have managed to brick the device again but used this link to resurrect the device without the need for a reflash.

So whilst all of this was happening up until the first week of January 2010 through trying to use the device daily, I had come to the decision that should a fix not be released shortly then the device would be on EBay.

On January 12, a small fix was released that essentially allow the larger update to be done over the air when this would be released. Sadly, this fix didn't resolve the reboot issues and I had to resort to the workarounds mentioned above. Again, I was of the same opinion if no reboot fix was to be issued then the device was bound for EBay. It was fun trying to get this firmware on due to the fact I had filled the root filesystem so had to remove applications to make space in order to load the new firmware on.

PR1.1 firmware was released on 14 January, again this would not go on so was forced to take a backup, reflash using a cable and restore from backup. Firstly, the backup/restore was flawless in that it both restored all of my data and reinstalled my applications - although it had to download these again. This was nice to see bearing in mind I had seen some concoctions over the years claiming to me mobile backup solutions but wasn't any good. I had to laugh about the application reinstall because to my horror it needed to download 670mb of data so there is no wonder I filled up the root filesystem. The other advantage was any garbage that had been installed previously had been removed and my root filesystem is now back to a reasonable size although I do question the partitioning considering there is over 32gb on board and to only use a minimal amount for rootfs is ridiculous. In the forums it has been said my rootfs has gone due to me installing test applications of which are not installing to the correct partitions but this is just an excuse. Should someone repartition the n900 and provide instructions in a similar vain to my n810 then I will do this.

Now to the question did it fixed the reboots?

After reading up on the issues around the reboots I came to the conclusion it looked like a software bug as the workaround was to disable power managment. I also had assumed that this could be fixed through software. My conclusions were correct, the device since the firmware updates is getting zero reboots to the extent I was proud to publish an up time of over 24 hours on my twitter.

Daily I am enjoying using the n900 for Internet web browsing, Instant Messaging, Twitter. Email - in fact everything it was intended to be used for. The keyboard and form factor are great and as a two handed device it really works for me especially considering I am a fan of the Nokia Communicators. It could be used in portrait mode and there is movement to make more applications and the OS to work in this form factor but I am not convinced. Other than the phone application I see no need for this feature as it is just as easy to pull out the keyboard and work in landscape.

The main issue with the n900 is lack applications even though the device is new. Whilst there is a back catalog of Maemo 4 applications these all need porting. Because the web browser is full featured you can use this instead of applications for example you can use Google Docs, Google Maps, Twitter and edit your blogs without the need for dedicated applications. But because the browser can be resourceful having several windows of web open can slow the device down and ultimately when web crashes it closes all of the windows. Whilst the screen resolution is wide enough for browsing again everything within an application can seem cramped so you either have to zoom in/out. But until applications are released you have an alternative available.

After spending over two years gradually converting form windows to Linux through having to find alternative solutions to things that I naturally accept within windows I can be patient with the n900. Through this approach should I not be able to find an application I know there will always be an online alternative that I can use within the web browser. On this basis, I am keen to tell people who are looking at the n900, that should they accept this shortcoming, realise the device is a work in progress still then they will enjoy using the n900. If they are looking for something to work out of the box and do everything an iPhone currently does then n900 isn't for them. Whereas if you are looking for a device that has the potential to do everything an iPhone can and are prepared to wait then the n900 is for you.

I have found that you begin using the n900 for example Twitter, I can tweet, post pictures, post vide, post audio and complete searches but I am using a combination of the built in conversation/IM app, a python application called Witter, another application called MAKU and the web browser. Not exactly seamless but working. So you can begin doing something on the n900 but suddenly find you cannot complete because there is some missing functionality in your current approach so you have to find a workaround.

Another example of this is the OVI Maps solution. This isn't a satellite or personal navigation application on the n900 as it is on other symbian solutions. Currently there is no other navigation application available, however Sygic are making an application to fulfill this void. Hopefully this will be released soon. Google maps can be used with real time GPS navigation using this guide where I had to use this yesterday because OVI Maps was completely useless. Again, in time this will change.

There is an argument that the n900 is not a phone it is an Internet tablet. I have avoided using the reference to phone within this post as I believe it is a new breed of device. The n900 being one of the first devices with this blend of phone, Mobile Internet Device, Navigation Device with a high specification that can genuinely multitask has the opportunity to set the bar from which other devices will be judged. It can be compared and will be compared to the IPhone but they are aimed at two different markets. The n900 can hold its own without connection to a PC whilst the IPhone needs Itunes to benefit using all of its features. For example, I can take 350mb encoded divx file, put it on the n900 and it plays whereas the IPhone needs conversion to be done. Being niche is where the n900 might not be as successful because people want simplicity where lack of functionality and customisabiilty can occur. Most people want to be told what they can do within an application for example, send as an email or mms, whereas the n900 offers more choice share over bluetooth and share via a pipe where they can be extended without having to wait for the manufacturer to build in the functionality. Therefore the N900 has the opportunity to set the bar for this breed of device it also at the very beginning of a new open culture for Mobile Technology which needs to be embraced or it will fail. Android, Windows mobile and Symbian are very similar in that they can potentially and already do everything the n900 does but if you use the n900, look at the possibility that device can be a fully functional computer in your hand and wait (the key factor) here for the applications to be developed then you will recognise the potential and how far beyond the other mobile OSes this
can take you.

However, remember this is the future and not now.

Holding out for a HTC Hero

Excuse the lame title but this has really been a long wait. You may ask am I referring to the review or a phone that I can finally get on with? Well the answer is both.

I had always decided to avoid Android because I wasn't impressed with the lack installation space available and because you cannot install applications onto the SD card. After beginning to get numb over Nokia and their poor release of the n97 plus the boredom of the e75. I thought that I would take a punt at android and get a phone. As there was now more choice over the g1 I was looking at either the HTC magic or hero. Again because I didn't want to spend too much and because I thought a Google version of Android would be better than HTC's implementation I purchased the magic.

At first the experience was great because I wasn't running out of space for installation. The phone worked smoothly and I enjoyed having a central location for application installs just like on the iPhone. However what I did find over time is the magic lacked RAM and was prone to slowing down. Plus the more I was reading and listening to about the hero I should have really got this phone.

I had always enjoyed playing around with a palm pre emulator with the synergy integration and out of the box experience with exchange. To get this on the magic meant purchasing applications but it was built into the hero natively. I tried rooting the magic and ran into issues with cooked ROMs so left the stock Google Rom on. Plus this meant I could get ota updates to android without having to reflash the phone each time.

But I still missed the synergy experience and multitouch so I went out and bought the HTC hero sim free from carphone warehouse. The price was acceptable over the counter considering it would only be a little cheaper online.

Unboxing the hero it feels about the same weight as the magic but the actual feel of the phone is not smooth but like a rubber texture. Also I believe the screen has a special texture that doesn't retain the grease from your fingers. Before setting up the phone I flashed it with the latest Rom from HTC. Again this was quite painless but wasn't as easy as the magic which did an ota update. I really do enjoy not being tied to a pc to do things with smartphones. Unlike the iPhone where you need itunes I do at least get some independence with Google android albeit not as much with the HTC version.

Set up was less painless than I'd thought because as soon as I entered my Google credentials mail started syncing. Whereas with the magic I had to enter the o2 apn details for internet and mms with it being a Vodafone handset. On entering the app store I could see all of the apps that I had purchased. I then spent several hours installing over the 100 applications that were previously on my magic. I was very surprised that other than copilot the apps I had bought could install again to another handset without asking for codes.

Initial thoughts were how fluid the HTC sense UI is. I have some social networking integration similar to synergy on the palm. I was disappointed to see although the hero has more RAM and it ran smoother than the magic, that the application install space was less than the magic. I have yet to get to no free space. Whilst it was a barrier stopping me getting an android handset, it still needs fixing and like symbian allow installation to the sd card. Further android needs to allow root access out of the box without the need for cooked Roms which then gives me access to tethering and more configurable options.

The whole ethos of an open os is to allow openness in my mind and I hate the sandbox approach of closing the door in my face. By all means like the n810 and palm make it a special key access to switch to the mode but give me the option. When Google removed the option of dev g1 phones not being allowed access to the app store for fear of copying is just plain stupid, but I digress.

The hero keyboard works well and responds quickly in both landscape and portrait. Sometimes if there is an app hogging the CPU it will slow the phone and the keyboard entry. But I have found that if you use a task killer app you can manage this. Android manages the applications currently running like windows mobile. Should it need more RAM it just closes applications down. All very well but I want the choice and I would hope like symbian there was a mode to run an application as a system app which ensures it always stays resident. In theory each app within android runs in its own virtual machine. You can leave a background process running for example a pod catcher which downloads your podcasts. This process uses little memory and when you want to play the podcast it will load the full fat application. Whilst this model sounds good on memory usage I have found I am never confident an app stays resident and when the phone boots it loads up everything. An application like start-up auditor can help manage the boot time applications without the need for root access but again I am not confident it works after mixed results.

After one month of use I am still enjoying the phone. The ability to share media with Twitter, Facebook or email with a few clicks is a breeze. I use twidroid for Twitter the pro version which is about the best and will hopefully soon be on par with gravity on s60.

For Google news I use newsrob which allows me to read offline and share the news. This then is picked up by feedsproxy to send to my Twitter. I am using a free app called blogaway to blog and is what I am using to type this post on. Copilot is installed for navigation and whilst it is good it lacks traffic alerts. For email and calendar I use the native apps. For web I use the native browser as it has multitouch. I use gbackup to send my sms,mms and call information to my Google mail. I have recently purchased mybackup to backup my phone to sd.

Each day is like an adventure where there is always an upgrade that needs doing via the app store or I can tweak the phone a little more. Even with this flexibility I read somewhere that people see android just for techies. Yes this is partially true but even out of the box with no tweaking the phone is usable for normobs. A friend of my who after using my hero has just got one. He had a Nokia 5800 like me back in January but returned it due to the lag during use. He is not a power user but knows a fudge when he sees one. I paid the same amount of £400 for my 5800 (as my hero) because I imported it from Hong Kong. Compared to the hero for money or let's say the cheaper magic it is still bad. Although recent firmwares have fixed some issues it still lacks RAM. This, the n97 fiasco has moved me away from s60. I still have 4 nokias but they are now back up phones. Only my e63 issued daily as a work phone.

Again I want to try the n900 but don't want to pay for the privilege again to avoid expensive disappointment.

The weak points of the hero are the camera. You need to get an app such as fxcamera zoom or snap photo pro but the latter doesn't really work. These apps improve the camera when taking pictures but the hero could do with a flash because in poor light the pictures are bad. I use an app called scan2pdf to photograph documents and convert them to pdf for emailing. A flash would brighten the pages. I use dogcatcher as my pod catcher which has a facility to stop and bookmark my place in the podcast when I turn my car engine off whilst streaming.

The built-in speaker is moderately good but could be louder. But when using the Bluetooth over ad2p for streaming audio it is terrible, but not audio wise. The phone connects to my car stereo but still insists although connected playing the sound over the internal phone speaker. This results in havoc where I either have to reboot the phone or switch Bluetooth off and back on again. The Bluetooth stack is a pain and I am slowly getting to the point of using an audio lead.

I have just bought an extended battery which claims is 3000mah where the supplied one is 1350mah. The phone is a little thicker but as I use it each day as my internet tablet I kill the battery easily. I am mainly browsing over WiFi at home and hsdpa and find it responsive. But I have found the WiFi sometimes needs manually forcing to connect just as the Bluetooth through the recycling of the option.

The browser that is built in is very capable and the multitouch is excellent and a lot better than the magic's zoom buttons.

I have documents to go installed so there are full rich apps available and hopefully more will appear such as a proper banking solution like ms money. The built-in pdf reader will read a 100mb pdf for viewing.

The phone could do with an audio and video editor and a lot more media apps like the iPhone. But like the iPhone I like the simplicity of the app store, the cheap prices and choice of apps including free ones that are available. I have bought many symbian apps and have found good ones are available for android that are free or a lot cheaper. The gaming scene is quiet where there is nothing as flashy as the iPhone but then I only play simple addictive games such as solitaire of tetris.

In conclusion the hero has been a good choice. Sure its rough on some edges and can be improved hardware wise. Whilst some issues can be fixed in software such as missing functionality and installation space (or lack of). For now Android is the future for me and has certainly been a dark horse. I will definitely sing its praises to people. I have just ordered an Archos Android tablet to see how it works in this form factor so will post a review of this soon.

Multitasking or switching

I can recall the first time I used a HP UNIX computer at De Montfort University back in 1991. The screens were huge at 21" where for back then both these machines and screens would have cost thousands of pounds. The workstations themselves had a RISC processor and 32mb of ram and a hard drive. Previously I had used a PC with Windows 3, an Atari ST and Apple MAC. All except the atari could run multiple applications concurrently but unless you had enough memory on the PC, like the apple mac it would task switch. This meant the application in the foreground would run and other applications in the background would sit and wait until they were brought to the front to continue processing. Windows had a 386 enhanced mode which would allow mutlitasking and you could set the priority times for dos applications. The HP UNIX boxes at university could multitask properly with all of the applications. I could be compiling, on IRC, doing FTP downloads, emailing and possibly some text editing all together over a 9600 baud link that was shared with several 1000s of computers at the university. Back then I could see the benefit of multitasking and when Psion brought out the 3a I eventually got my first PDA (a psion 3c) and was running many applications at once.

I recently posted on twitter that I run 12 applications concurrently on my phone. I also had to chuckle when I read Engadget where the editor was struggling to do several things on his iphone. Possibly if he had several phones with him he would have been able to accomplish his tasks more easily and quickly.

If I look at my usage I will always focus on the one task and occasionally switch between applications if I know an email has arrived or twitter has updated. But there are times such as when I am using flyingmoney to reconcile my accounts whilst the web browser is open. Or, if I am in the middle of doing something else and I don't want distrurbing then my call handling software will take control - all happening in the background and without the need to close down applications.

Apple's recent idea of using push notifications is good in principle but after hearing that people are stopped in the middle of their current task. They then have to manage the notice, then can carry on. But if they receive for example several messages they have to deal with each one separately whereas I can just ignore them.

There are many reasons why we should not multitask because not focusing on one task makes us unproductive. Reasons not to multitask. I find having the flexibility of being able to do several things together I can still focus on the task at hand and switch as the need dictates.

Mac os used to task switch where background tasks used to stay still until they were brought to the foreground. Whereas windows applications would in a round about way multitask but not really properly until windows 95. Before Windows I also tried Os/2 which was definitely more grown up. As some of you are aware some of this technology underpinned Windows Nt. I also recall seeing a piece of software called Deskview X which would allow you to run concurrent Os way back in the early 90s and I decided back then that this would be useful but was sadly too expensive for me. It is only in the last few years with virtual machine technology that has allowed me to do this properly. I would envisage that we will also will be able to do this on our mobile devices in the near future.

Many commentators have been knocking Nokia for the S60 UI saying it is outdated and not as intuitive or elegant as the iphone. Whilst there is some degree of truth behind this, I do believe that the UI of S60 can and will evolve into something better if not comparable to the iphone. Again symbian the underlying OS like the iphones OS both are very powerful, can multitask if allowed and are very robust. Whilst I would welcome changes in the S60 ui I would hate to see it limit the devices just like the iphone has, to the extent that it was too simple and it reduced the functionality of not being able to multitask. While I understand Apples approach in trying to limit the number of applications running to ensure the consumer experience and battery life are not affected. Should this ever happen to Symbian then I will be moving to another platform.

In a way the current mobile market is like history repeating itself. In the early days the Psion was the technical superior device. Because it did not evolve and change as the consumer wanted colour screens and form factors such as the palm this could contribute to Nokia's and ultimately Symbians stagnation. At this moment in time I will avoid the word downfall as both Nokia and Symbian are larger players in the market than Psion ever was. They are making structural changes to their organisations and to the partnerships for example the Symbian Foundation, Nokia and Intel partnership, Maemo and QT, Open sourcing (not Saucing.) and Horizon for application development. But what we are not seeing are new and innovative devices just rehashes of old technology.

Nokia have always had two major lines of products with E series and N series. These at some point in time may converge but again I would hope to see that any converged devices whilst simple to use, still allow power users to multitask and work with the machines internals and not like the iphone where the walled garden approach is nice to look at but you are not allowed to stray beyond the fence or walk on the grass.