Oh no, don’t get me wrong. I have no intention to rival The Oatmeal (if that’ is what you think I am doing), and I am not expecting this to be circulating into a meme either. I’m just doing this to show you my perspective as someone who used to have an iPhone, before I committed myself to Android.
With most of spring anime have finished airing and while waiting for the next summer anime title to start airing, I decided to write about this new gadget that is just revealed yesterday. Before I go into details about that new high-tech toy I must say I’m not into the summer anime “Kingdom” which already had its 4th episode aired by the time of writing (the character design is just not my type). Back into the gadget, it is none other but the freshly baked “Googlet” (Google tablet) named Google Nexus 7.
A device with the ’7′ moniker but powered by Android “Jelly Bean”. I am jelly.
Made by ASUS, this is tablet is beautiful in terms of looks and build quality and kudos to ASUS for keeping up their reputation with the release of this new toy. Sporting a 7″ (thus the “7″ moniker) 1280×800 Corning glass display, 10hrs of web browsing/e-reading, powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU and pre-loaded with Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean”, this is perhaps the most powerful 7″ tablet so far. However the device is quite a “crippled-down” one if it were to be compared with the offerings from Samsung and the likes.
The first thing I’d look for in a tablet is the availability of a microSD card slot, which this tablet has none but to only rely on its internal storage (8 or 16 GB available). That much is not bad but I could customize it by myself I would make it with 4 GB internal memory plus 32 GB expandable via microSD card. After all with it supporting memory card it could virtually support unlimited storage capacity because the only limit would be how many memory card you could carry at one time.
Another thing that is missing is there is no 3G/4G version available which is quite a turn off factor for me though they might have not considered it to keep the price down ($199 for 8 GB version). Other than that there’s no back-facing camera present, though it wasn’t a big deal to me but then with the announcement of Microsoft Surface more than a week ago I changed my mind a bit. There are more than one way to use a back-facing camera on a tablet despite that thing is too huge to be a real picture snapper.
For example Microsoft have mentioned about how the back-facing camera would be useful in a meeting where you could even record the meeting itself if you wanted to. I on the other hand imagined that if I were an interviewer recruiting new staff for my company I could use it to record the footage of the interview itself. For now I think I want Microsoft Surface better but considering that this is a reference design for Android Jelly Bean tablet I think I could ignore all of its shortcomings.
The so-called “the world’s first social streaming media player” that looks beautiful but can’t do much by itself.
At the same time Google launched their first streaming media player named Nexus Q that is just yet another streaming player but with a spherical shape and integrated with Google Music (as one would expect). By my definition it is nowhere close enough to be called a media player because it has no control and no display to know what’s playing. The only way you could control it is via your Android phone/tablet as it has no playback control and the only thing you could control is power on/off and the volume.
Ports for “banana” audio plugs, network, optical S/PDIF, micro HDMI, micro USB, you name it.
Other than the audio/network/power related ports at the back of the player unit I’m not sure what exactly the micro USB port is for. I sure hope that it means there’s a way to control this device from a PC interface because although I have an Android phone it doesn’t mean that I’m happy with that as the only way to interface with it. Well for its design/shape there’s no way to put a display on it though because hey who’d want a spherical display even for a small computer like this?
Yes it is a computer because you know what, it is powered by Android 4.0 (ICS) and comes with 16GB internal storage (priced at $299). For me the only acceptable reason of it using Android is to allow it to interface with Google Music, Google TV and Youtube but you can’t play Angry Birds on it. If only it was designed to come with a dock so that it could connect to a touchscreen display and act as an Android desktop (now that would be cool).
Google recommended the premium-priced Triad bookshelf speaker for this baby, meaning that the speaker they recommended is pricier than the player itself (or as much as the player + 1 Android device to control it). Another accessory they recommended is the audio cable with the “banana” plugs with length tailored to fit the player’s unique shape. All are available from Google Play store but as the time of writing it is only available in the US (typical ‘evil’ Google).
So will I get the player too? Even if I have money I don’t think I would buy it or any “streaming player” at that because I can’t imagine a situation where I would need it. Just like games, audio is also pretty much a personal experience to me and I am not compelled to share let alone stream my stuff even if it means sharing with friends and family. Well I’m able to say this because my preferences are always different from nearly everybody I know so I’ve got used to it.
I think even the best smartphone out there are crippled down. I’m not including iPhone here because as a closed-ecosystem product it doesn’t have the right to compete in the open market. As an Apple product iPhone may be great but as a phone it is just as good as a phone from Apple but not better than its best rival.
That said, I think for a phone to become a real ‘smart’ phone it should be able to perform these functions:
While I’ve found some apps that could turn an Android phone into a multi-touchpad, the 4 other functions mentioned above are still missing. I’m quite disappointed with phone makers as well as Google for making a phone and its OS without those functions, although they are technically possible, and not technically difficult to implement either. For being a secondary display for a PC, I’ve been thinking for a while now whether the recently released Ubuntu for Android have that function or not (I hope it does).
Tablets, despite being hi-end products could become failures too, no thanks to most of them not supporting call/sms. I mean the 3G models come with sSIM card slot yet they usually did not include call/sms function. Sure not many people would use tablets to make calls/sms but those functions are very cheap to implement (which explains why you could buy a dumbphone at $20-30 these days) so I see no point not to implement them.
Have you heard about ‘phablets? Yeah, they’re the newest, 5-inch+ display breed in the smartphone family, a more phone-tablet hybrid (thus the ‘phablet’) than the 7-inch GSM-enabled tablets. If you’re still unclear of what it is, the Samsung Galaxy Note is its prime example. While I do like them to a certain extent, there are a few things I hate about them, for example all phablets I’ve known so far don’t come with radio. Even the $40-50 dumbphone can have it so I don’t see any excuse why those phablets can’t implement it too. After all nearly all hi-end sub-4″ phones come with radio too so there’s nothing that justifies phablets can’t have it.
Since the “Sony Ericsson” become just “SONY” the electronic giant has released at least 4 latest XPERIA phones under the NXT series since earlier this year. I’m fine with their unique design and awesome features but WTH many of those phones (with exception of XPERIA sola) don’t come with microSD card slot! This is ridiculous, or should I say stupid? Although its a good thing that XPERIA sola comes with one micro SD card slot but sola is just mid-tier smartphone. One would normally expect a high-end model like XPERIA S comes with a memory card slot but disappointingly it didn’t. Well with sola just hit the stores recently I think I would get that then instead of XPERIA S.
Apple on Wednesday have revealed ‘half’ of the stories about what they call “the new iPad” (instead of “iPad 3″). However what’s so great about “the new iPad” anyway? Without expandable storage the tablet ain’t going to be a post-Mac (sorry, not post-PC) device. Sure we have cloud storage now but computing isn’t supposed to be an online experience alone. I believe we have to be able to get access to our files regardless an internet connection is present or not. After all we’re still far away from a super reliable and free internet. Not to mention with all those efforts to censor our not-so-free internet that we still need to rely on.
With the last 2 generations of iPads I always thought “there are still room for improvements” yet the only thing I see improved are stuff that I don’t need. Apple still hate ports, slots and buttons.
“The new iPad” is not all bad. However I’ve never liked Apple’s closed ecosystem to begin with. Although there’s a thin possibility I’d need to jailbreak the iGadget, chances are there are even a lot more things I found too restrictive. For example I don’t see any reason in not allowing drag&drop file transfer and force users to use the iTunes.
I remember having earlier generations of mp3 Walkman where although drag&drop was possible for music files, those files weren’t playable unless you were using the SonicStage software to transfer them. In the end SONY stopped using that following user complaints and chose the conventional-but-works drag&drop. Now I can’t understand why Apple would like to force iGadget owners to use it as if they haven’t had enough control on the ecosystem. I found that there’s no excuse for not to allow drag&drop file transfer because it’s not that it’s not technically impossible. It’s also the most widely adopted method of transferring files to mobile devices so this just makes Apple look like some arrogant companies.
Now do you think you should or should not get it? I’ve set a few guides here and decide by yourself.
Reasons why you should get it:
Reasons why you should avoid it:
(Written in response to a blog post here at TabletWritings.com)
Answering the question “why I wouldn’t mind getting a tablet”. For this question I’ll divide my answer into 2; one for the 5-inch “phablet” and another one for the 7-inch “mini” tablet. Here’s my say.
5″ tablet
I have no issues with carrying a 5″ phablet (phone+tablet) around with me because they’re still pocketable enough for me. After all I’m used to carry small notebooks in my pocket for years, and they are often bigger than those phablets. However that still doesn’t mean I’d tolerate Samsung Galaxy Note. Sure there’s only a 0.3″ difference between a true 5″ phablet like Lenovo LePad’s display and Galaxy Note’s 5.3″ display. However if that ‘small’ difference doesn’t give me any noticeable gain over having slightly larger screen then it means it has no advantage over the smaller one. Besides I like things to have “rounded-up” value (integer) which means the number 5.0 looks more beautiful to me than 5.3.
7″ tablet
There’s no true “phone-replacement” tablet so far (phablets are exception) but I’m not blaming the tablet makers because it’s clear that very few people (including myself) would actually want to use a tablet as an absolute phone substitute. It maybe less portable than the 5-inchers but I’m ready to design my own tablet case/bag to make it cool enough to lug the ‘mini’ tablet around (I used the word ‘mini’ here because a true tablet is supposed to be 10″ and up in size).
Recently KDE announced a 7-inch Linux tablet named Spark and will probably be released anytime this year. From the available specs it doesn’t have a voice call capability, which means it’s not what I’d want for a phone replacement tablet. However being a Linux user (a convert but not yet a fan) I’d love to see one lying around after various attempts by Linux community failed in miserably in the past. It will sport KDE’s Plasma Active interface, a mobile counterpart to Plasma Desktop. In terms of mobile UI I personally think the Plasma Active is good enough for phone/tablet operations and maybe could even give a better user experience than those found in Android or iOS.
Early look of KDE Spark. Those ports are sexy. I mean it.
More about the KDE Spark can be read here.
(This is a follow-up post to my previous post about Android tablet which can be read here.)
I’ve gave up on my dying LG Androphone. And I’m not satisfied with the cheap Samsung Galaxy Mini my girlfriend gave me. Therefore I decided that my next purchase must be either a better smartphone or a tablet.
The problem with most tablets are they’re not as ‘smart’ as their phone counterparts. I’m saying this because no matter how proud a tablet for having 3G connectivity, it looks dumb enough to me for not having a GSM voice communication capability. That’s a crippled-down device if you ask me.
Now I have at least 4 candidates. Like I said before (either in this blog or somewhere else) I’m going to tolerate display larger than 4″ but that doesn’t mean I can accept anything more than 5″ for a phone. I’m also going to acknowledge that 7-inchers are tablets too.
For ‘big’ phones I have 2 candidates, the Samsung Galaxy Note and Lenovo LePad. I’ve rejected Galaxy Note right on the launch date but I think it’s worth explaining it again why. The display is a 5.3″ one so that has exceeded the maximum size allowed by me.
Samsung Galaxy Note
Sure Lenovo LePad maybe inferior in terms of hardware (480 x 800 display res as opposed to Galaxy Note’s 800 x 1280, not to mention having a slower CPU than the latter). LePad may have won my heart at this rate but there’s no radio, a feature that I rarely use but extremely important.
Lenovo LePad
Then for tablets I have 2 candidates as well, namely Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus and Huawei MediaPad. You might wonder why I chose those 2 while there are “better” 7-inchers out there. The answer is only those 2 have what I want, a voice call capability (a feature often missing in other tablets, even among 10-inchers), making them a great substitute for a phone.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
Feature wise, Huawei MediaPad is closer to my heart. Not to say that It’s better than Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus for both of them are very similar in terms of hardware setup, MediaPad has an advantage in having higher resolution display (800×1280, just like most 10″ tablets. Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus only have 600×1024) despite both having the same 7″ display.
Huawei MediaPad
At this point I’m no longer mind getting an iPhone if that is the only way to be. The only problem is none are priced below MYR2k (new set, unlocked, contract free). After I’m once an iPhone owner too.
Speaking of iPhone, let’s talk about why I, if possible still want an Androphone even if I could get an iDevice. First, I don’t believe in Apple’s myth of “it just works” or “”works right out of the box” or “ease of use”. Only lazy people would want something like that.
Some might argue that Macs and iDevices are friendlier towards people who are fear of computers. That’s bullshit. It’s for people who don’t want to learn about computing.
By learning to configure a computer doesn’t mean you’d have to become close to being a computer scientists but at least try to be able to understand the configurations behind it. Believe me all computers can go wrong and will eventually go wrong. That said even if you’re using a Mac, sooner or later you’ll run into problems. That’s when knowing how to solve the problem yourself would become in handy, and it would save you your time and money.
Oh well I forgot it’s a ‘taboo’ set by Apple to open the PC case. I also forgot Mac/iDevice people are rich and have no problem to pay for even a small repair. I’m getting closer to get a tablet and t the same time I’m moving further away from getting a Mac/iDevice.
After doing some research on local market I found that these 2 mid-range phones, the cheaper Samsung Galaxy W and the more expensive Motorola RAZR are the most popular ones, being sold by all telcos as well as Courts Mammoth, one of Malaysia’s largest electric/electronic and home appliances store. Yes, Motorola is starting to make their local presence again with good product lineups too, after years of silence and unavailability. These devices are within my budget and come with features I wanted but some deep assessments are needed before I could pick one because the price difference between them is considerably big.
Research were done with 3 steps, where first I went to GSM Arena to look for available models but the problem with GSM Arena is their ‘catalog’ is messy and it’s hard to know what model is available locally as they just dump everything they could find in there. Then I went to localized websites of the smartphone makers and telcos and managed to make my own list of locally available phones. Those websites however seem incomplete that it feels like they don’t show all available phones because I know there are some officially launched models but are not in those websites.
Samsung Galaxy W
This Samsung Galaxy W is newer than the Galaxy Ace I mentioned in my previous post. I could get one with subsidized price from as low as $100 by purchasing it from Celcom, with up to 18 months contract. However the monthly commitment is quite on the high side where I might need to pay around $80 every month. It might not be a problem if I don’t have to pay for my fixed-line broadband though but currently it’s one of the cheapest way to get it.
Motorola RAZR
Next in line is Motorola RAZR that is around $100 pricier than the above Galaxy W. For this the cheapest way to have it is to get it on loan from Courts Mammoth. However after giving it a second thought, for its price it might be better to go for a tablet instead because there are similarly priced tablets out there and they’re the good ones too.
The problem with tablets though is most of them don’t have voice communication capabilities, which is kind of stupid and feels like crippled-down devices considering that the same devices may also support 3G data communication. I was thinking that if a tablet could make calls it might be better to get it instead of buying a phone with similar price. I don’t mind lugging a tablet everywhere as if it’s a cellphone because I could settle with bluetooth headset and wear some bluetooth-enabled watch that could display caller ID and SMS if needs be.
Bluetooth 'watch'. I know they're not cheap.
If you ask me there are 3 tablets I might get for a phone replacement, namely the upcoming Asus Transformer Prime, Lenovo Ideapad K1 and Acer Iconia Tab A500. The problem is Transformer Prime is yet to be launched, Ideapad as I know it has a locked GSM capability (no calls/texting) while Iconia on the other hand is made by Acer, a computer maker I’ve always have issues with due to their reputation of making sub-par quality products.
BTW I’ve heard reviews that Iconia is good and very much UNLIKE Acer’s laptops when it comes to hardware build/quality. However the problem is not over yet as I need those tablets to allow me make/answer calls and send/receive SMS. Oh I forgot to mention about Sony Tablet but I haven’t found them anywhere on local stores yet.
(Written in response to “Why Android tablets failed: A postmortem“)
What is an iPad if you ask me? I’d answer it’s a device that is like an iPod Touch but bigger, and it can do everything that iPod Touch can do and nothing else. I could also say the same thing for Android tablets. Can you see the problem there? My statement itself is not the problem, it’s the truth. It’s a true problem and not just exaggerated.
I was close to get a tablet December last year (it was either Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet) but I managed to convince myself that it’s not the device I’d need, at least for now. If the only advantage that I could get from a tablet is having 2, 3 times larger display than my phone’s screen then there’s not much stuff worth paying money for. After all (apart from making/receiving calls and texting) I only do browsing/social networking on my phone and nothing else. If the need for the 7″ or 10″ display is enough to justify the purchase then I must say it’s an immature decision.
Having the 7″ or 10″ only allows more stuff in an app to be displayed at a time, as opposed to the need to swipe between screens on a phone to change panels. With a display of that size, it eliminates the need to swipe between screens by displaying all panels side by side. For example, if you’re using a twitter client on a phone you’d need to swipe left or right to switch between timeline panel and mentions/lists panel but on a tablet all of them are displayed next to each other. For me not having such feature is not a big deal, again, not for now.
As and Androidian myself, I think most of us Androidians are comfortable with having the phone only, unlike those Apple fanboys who tend to have deep pockets and more money at their expenses. Yes, for those Apple fanboys who have iPhone/iPad, there’s a big chance that they already have at least a Macbook/iMac. Because they usually have more money, they’d usually failed to justify the ‘want’s and the ‘needs’ and easily deceived into thinking that having the iPad is necessary. In other words, they already have the love (“pre-love” a.k.a. fanboyism) to justify the ‘needs’ for such tablet as ‘valid’.
iPad maybe good but not good enough. Other than just being an oversized iPhone, it doesn’t carry more features as compared to iPhone (and it also shares the same restrictions as the iPhone). As a “religion” that preaches to people that tablet is something that everybody who doesn’t need a PC should have, Apple is a “religion” that only people with extra money could afford to embrace.
Apple committed one big mistake. Not everybody needs a PC, and not everybody needs a tablet either. If it was a future of tablet computing most people would have afforded one, and Android tablets sales would have rocketed but that didn’t happen because the ‘need’ for a tablet is simply a lie, a successful lie told by Apple.
I know too Android is not a perfect OS. As an OS that is built on top of a slightly modified Linux kernel, it has its flaws too. However that is what makes me prefer it over iOS.
I found two biggest flaws in Android. Initially there were three (the third one was the source code is only available for the current release though not necessarily available at launch but I’m no developer so it’s OK).
My first issue with Android is it is not available for general public but only to phone makers. It is not something that you could download and install in any device you wanted even if the device is physically capable of running it (hardware). Not just the OS itself, it also has similar issues of availability for the updates. The updates usually not available via OTA (Over The Air) which means you can’t utilize your wi-fi or 3G connection to update your system in a similar way you update Windows/Linux desktop. You’d need to connect your phone and run the updater tool (which would download and flash your phone automatically). The need to flash the entire system just to apply an OS update is ridiculous, showing how premature the system is. At least from what I know, iOS updates may roll out in patches (except for major upgrade of course). I was informed that the unavailability of OTA update is the limitation by some telcos. That’s a lie. In my case, I own a no telco-lock, no contract LG Androphone. However I never got any updates from my telco, instead I’d periodically check for available updates from LG or online communities and get notified that way, which is very cumbersome and inconvenient.
This second biggest issue I found is the UI fragmentation. I hate it when Android phone makers keep overlaying the UI with their own. They should have just concentrate on the hardware instead of fiddling and tinkering with the OS. In other words they should concentrate on optimizing the OS for the hardware by perfecting the drivers and software-hardware integration. Google should never allowed these phone makers to replace the stock UI and make their own as default. Instead let the user decide what UI (homescreen) they would like to use. In some ‘extreme’ cases (like most LG’s Androphones) they even went as far as removing the stock UI completely. I’m not sure about Motorola because I wouldn’t bother to touch it (never liked Motorola since I was born although it was the first cellphone in my family) but I have a feeling that their UI would be equally sucks if they had it too. One of the worst vendor-made UI I’ve seen on Androphones is from Sony Ericsson that makes it feels like a Nokia phone (no multi home screen by default like Nokia Symbian phones). That is followed by Samsung’s TouchWiz. While most Androphone users praised HTC’s Sense UI, I prefer to stick with the stock UI.
Speaking of UI, I’m always thinking about the importance of having multiple homescreen. It is crucial to make the ‘desktop’ less cluttered in the similar fashion to multiple desktop (workspace) found in most Linux distro. For Android to be built based on Linux it is expected for it to inherit this feature to keep the good Linux reputation. Nobody has to go to the app drawer and scroll through it every time s/he wanted to launch an app if s/he can place the most used apps shortcuts on the homescreens. Homescreens also allow a user to categorize those shortcuts, which I think is a better categorization solution that categorizing them in the app drawer. I know some 3rd party homescreens allow app categorization in the app drawer but like I said let the user decide that later after they play around with the default UI for a bit. After all I don’t think people would like it if every PC vendor forced their own Windows themes on every PC they sell.
But all that doesn’t matter much to me as long as the benefit I gained from it is more than those flaws. I know most Androphone users didn’t buy the phone for for it’s tweakability and customizability, so does that not all iPhone owners bought it for iOS’ awesomeness. In fact I bet most of them would agree that iPhone is too restrictive to their liking. In a sense, once everybody starts buying the iPhone it would feel less special and less unique.
Now let’s talk about the most recent Android (phone and OS). Both Google and Samsung co-launched Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS) and Galaxy Nexus (see picture below) being the first ICS device. Galaxy Nexus sure looks cool but like I said above, it comes with flaws too. For example, the most basic needs I found missing is microSD card slot. Sure the phone has huge 32GB built-in storage but who’d immediately need that much storage? At least the iPhone comes with multiple capacity selection right at launch.
Also I hate the curved form factor (see picture above). To be honest I’ve never liked the curvature like those ‘chins’ found on many HTC Androphones. It would only make the phone looks bold from a certain angle, making it pointless to be this thin. After all when we put it in pocket the force would be unevenly distributed on the surface. I’ve broken my phone while it was in my pants’ pocket before so I know well about the risk.
When it comes to display size, for me 4″ is the maximum size for a phone. However Galaxy Nexus comes with a 4.63″ screen. I don’t care about the high resolution (1280×720) and I think the argument that it’s to enable people to watch 720p video is also lame. I mean who’d want to watch 720p video on a phone? Definitely not me as I think it’s a stupid thing to do. If I want to watch a 720p videos I’d go for a tablet or even a netbook. I want all Androphone makers to stop making big screen phones like this. Sorry but making larger display than the iPhone does not make it better than iPhone.
On the brighter side LG just announced the DoublePlay for T-Mobile. It looks very promising because of its 2 key features. The first one is it sports a dual-screen display (see picture below).
It is kinda disappointing that for a screen of this size (3.5″, which is the same as iPhone) it has a low resolution, at 320×480 only. Even my LG Optimus One also has the same resolution display, albeit at a bit smaller screen size (3.2″). Well this isn’t a Optimus phone so I guess that’s the reason.My only concern is since the word play is there this phone should give the impression that it is for gaming but for a screen with that resolution would make it feel underpowered. Just so you know this phone is powered by 1GHz CPU so it’s not that underpowered underneath though. BTW, speaking of gaming, I wish the second screen would act as a secondary display to show game stats like the one found in Nintendo DS.
The second feature (the one I missed a lot in touchscreen phones) is the physical keypad (see picture above). It is a trait only found in some older Nokia phones. Taking a similar approach to Nokia’s old E-series flip-phones for business users, the keyboard is the split-type one, which is surprisingly easy to type on (see picture below).
For me the haptic feedback of the touchscreen display is no match to the keypad’s tactile feedback. That touch and feel is irreplaceable and the most important thing is you could rest your fingers on the keypad without triggering/registering any keypress (the only tradeoff is you’d end up having a thick phone but for me it’s OK because I love the feeling that I’m holding a phone in my hand instead of holding a thin card deck). Couple that with the secondary display, it would be great if the smaller display would double as a separate numeric keypad when typing so that I wouldn’t have to press the Alt key every time I want to key in a number.
The biggest disappointment with this phone however (and probably with all LG Androphones) is that it doesn’t come with ICS although it is capable of running it for its hardware. Instead it comes with the older version of Gingerbread (2.3) as opposed to the newer ones. Yes, it an ‘old’ choice for an OS (and maybe bad choice too) considering that most other phones by this time are already updated to 2.3.4 or 2.3.5. Well LG has always at least one step behind all Androphone makers when it comes to bringing updated software. I know it perfectly as it happened to me many times already, being an owner of an LG Androphone (even the newer, more power Optimus-es than mine also came with ‘old’ Froyo instead of Gingerbread).
That said, I guess the last hope of my Android faith would be placed for ASUS Padfone or if possible I’d like to import Sharp/Toshiba Androphone from Japan! ASUS made some Adrophones to before, most notably the Garmin-ASUS series but I never wanted those ‘rubbish’ as they came with Eclair when all other phones already using Froyo. Sure it’s good as a GPS device but not as an Androphone. Actually there’s another promising effort worth noting where there was this Synapses Built-to-Order Android phone back then; great idea and supposed to be shipping this year but the effort seems dead now (even the website has been down for months).
Image via Wikipedia
First of all I have to tell you there are no such browsers to begin with. C’mon it’s just a gimmick, a gimmick!
Just now in Google+ I stumbled upon an article about Chrome browser is coming to Android next week. Before we go any further I advise you to read my previous article about Chrome browser on Android. Believe me it’s worth reading it first.
Like I said in my blog post above, it’s not that I like the browser or it’s being great or anything but I think it would be ridiculous if Google, the developer of both Android and Chrome, didn’t port the browser to the OS. On the other hand I’m not sure if it will be available for older Android though since the article below only mention about Ice Cream Sandwich.
I can say the wait is finally over now (well, almost). I’ve been waiting for this since the very first Androphone hits the global market. To be honest I have never accepted the idea that Android browser “is a Chrome browser TOO” because it’s too restrictive and too dumbed-down to be called Chrome. The default browser doesn’t feel like Chrome at all if you ask me. Even mobile version of Opera feels close enough to its desktop counterpart, and so does Firefox. That’s why I’ve anticipated for a true mobile Chrome browser.
By the way I did mention the word “Fire” and “Fox” in the title of this article. Well no matter how much I’ve been waiting for this Chrome mobile, the Chrome browser itself will never be my default browser, at least until Google decides to let me freely rearrange the navigation icons. I’ll keep using Firefox as my default browser for a while or at least until I’m forced to switch. It’s true that Firefox has issues of its own but they’re too little if compared to the benefits I gained from using it. Chrome is completely out of my list because despite being open source too it doesn’t offer the same level of customization as Firefox does. For example I can rearrange the navicons in Firefox to my liking but I can’t do the same in Chrome (in Chrome icon rearrangement is only available to plugin icons). I prefer those icons to be rearranged as they’d greatly reduce cursor movement (at least to my browsing experience). Sure I could use gestures to navigate webpages but it works better on multi-touch interface than with a mouse.
And before the article I mentioned above I came across another article at TechRepublic that whines about Firefox which resulting me posting this in the first place. It was a raging article but thank Madoka this one reply to the article hits the nail right in the head. I quoted the reply below:
“First, I’ve pretty much stopped using Internet Explorer on all of my machines. I’ve gotten tired of the bullsh*t for lack of user preferences with IE, in as much everything requiring money for additional features that are free-ware with Firefox.
Core in that was Google’s use of the black background for their GGL Bar .. yeah…. that’s right.. GOOGLE finally forced me to use someone else’s browser permanently though its not their crap called Chrome. Google’s refusal to allow a user to select a color preference, and more recently their redesign to force page preview in the search results is what finally pushed me over the edge.
So entered the Stylish themes/scripts, and with Adblock I have now fully disabled that f*king preview … it was bad enough when an accidental click ANYWHERE to the right of a result would open the preview … but oh no, that wasn’t good enough for google they had to start turning it on when ever my mouse happens to just rest.. NO CLICK NEEDED, just RESTING in that “>>” boxed area… I’d had enough and Firefox did for me what IE could not .. set **MY* preferences back.
IE9 crashed every time I tried it (beta or release) due to its defaulted hardware acceleration. I mean how f**king arrogant of Microsoft.. you force hardware acceleration onto users without 100% compatibility, or without some routine to test it and set it to OFF if the test fails.. Would it have killed microsoft to build a simple test “can you see this page” after its started.. and if not (ie. a continuous tab reload or browser crash) leave the feature off … but not microsoft.. it knows all to well whats on a users system..
Then there’s the stupidity microsoft did with the Tabs and URL bar, and turning off the menus? And with IE9 you don’t (or didn’t) get the option to have URL & Tabs on two separate rows … you couldn’t drag to move, etc.. so what they told me is that the person that DOES use 8 or more tabs on a browser .. that user is not to be accommodated, we’ll only allow 3 or 4 tabs before crunching since NO ONE needs more than that… like no user ever needed more than 640k … closed minded stupidity is what fills microsoft these days..
I’m the user that wants their file menu .. and while Firefox disabled it, a simple extension adds it back, and the same for the status bar (stausbar4ever) and even after the initial dislike of Firefox’s URL/Tabs placement I could have reverted with an extension … but did finally see why they’d changed it, and the change made sense to me so I grew to like their change…
But at no time have I ever wanted a browser to hide behind Uni-Brow ..er.. Uni-Button .. the cog or other icon as the single sole top level menu … I like my Edit, View, Tools menus.. so I choose which I need and go into it for a function, rather than open the unified icon, then go to a menu, then go to a menu, then go to a selection … etc.. stupidity in the extreme.. burying menus under additional levels of hell, doesn’t endear you to the public. But even that was un-do-able.. with Firefox easily enough..
Where Firefox has seriously screwed up, is upping their Major Version numbers, when their release is NOT a MAJOR version release! Why they had to be so f**king retarded is beyond me.. even now they’re starting to back pedal … so in v10 they will finally stop defaulting extensions off or forcing them off/presuming incompatibility or give the user better options to control the upgrade with/without … all of which wouldn’t have been necessary when they haven’t changed a major functional issue from 5 to 6 … or so it seems from 6 to 7 … just slap a new number on it, with bug fixes.. real thoughtful … f*ing morons is more like it..
But the CORE of the reasons to use Firefox or Chrome are still there.. that because IE is such a closed programing platform, no one wants to build for it without the ROI ($$) … The extensions, adblock, firebug, stylish … ALL of which are free/freeware, and allow users to get around idiots like Google, Adware peddlers & ads that annoy (major push there was the last time an ad turned on the sound by default, as if downloading a 3 or 4 meg SWF/FLV file wasn’t bad enough).
SO.. while Firefox has issues… like that startup delay I take a hit for, are far outweighed by the benefits … like that its not tied to Outlook’s online/offline operation, and Firefox’s ability to get ride of google stupidity .. Its benefits made it my mainstay browser.. so much so that I actually selected the option to make it the Default Browser in my XP & Vista machines.. that’s something I’d NEVER done before … all brought on by Google, and exacerbated thanks to IE9.”
Really there are lots of things Google need to do to convert me into a Chrome user. They have to fix the persistent (unmovable) navigation icons issue first, among other things, and then we’ll talk. It’s not a bad browser by itself and offers better alternative than IE (and perhaps better than Opera too) but because of those issues I don’t think it’s worth getting and using it as my main browser.
On a separate development you might already read/heard elsewhere about Google is shutting down many of its products/services like Jaiku, Buzz, etc. and even their ‘department’ like Google Labs. What the… including the great Google Labs too? I mean, seriously? Alright, they decided “to focus on core products/services”. So what? One of the thing I love about Google’s corporate culture is they allow their workers to spend 20% of their working time for their own research. That is the purpose of having Google Labs in the first place. Most of Google products (both failed and success) are originated there thus it can be said that Google Labs is like the backbone of the company in the same way their search engine and ad revenue do to them. Therefore I wonder if Google Labs is shutting down, what’s the meaning of “being Google” anymore?
I don’t care about the other products/services being shut down but shutting down Google Labs is sad and unacceptable to me, and it feels like Google is breaching their own corporate culture that way. Maybe this is just another step for them to be a lesser evil than their “Don’t Be Evil, Do No Evil” but I think this would only taint their reputation further after the #nymwars controversy. And where’s the promised complete revamp of Blogger? Give it to us already, it’s been long overdue, you idiot!
