yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Yes, the flip side of its openness and relaxed policy means lots of different variants around, and firmware upgrade becomes a serious challenge. OEM would need to differentiate themselves so they can't use the google stock firmware without "adding value" to it.

I wonder why HTC could not use exactly the same copy of the firmware for all it's handset regardless of whether it is Hero, Magic, Desire, or whatever. If they can do that, then all their user base could upgrade to the most current firmware the moment OEM modification is done for the latest handset. Why should there be a version for Desire, another for Supersonic, etc? I think HTC has to shoulder the blame here, not google. HTC is not doing it right.

I think on the part of google, it also needs to separate out anything that has high chance of changes. Examples could include maps, email, keyboard, etc. This is to allow users to upgrade these components without having to touch the firmware.

Overall, I think there are serious segmentation problems which must be addressed, and sooner it is done the better.
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
The problem with Android is this indeed, but on the flipside you are never tied to one firmware/phone. If you, for some reason, want to be on 1.0 but have your phone show up as a Nexus when browsing the Market, feel free to do so. And most of the time, we have developers such as cyanogen (Not sure who he is comparable to in iPhone development). Cyanogen has gotten a lot of 2.0's new features, in 1.6 (The new browser, the new clock app, a lot of the eclair "guts").
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Bump Post #129 and #130
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Segmentation problem of Android

Not sure why users could want many firmware and phone version still, but anyone assuming that it is a desirable thing for end user to have the choice of many different phone (e.g. Desire pretending to be a G1 etc), what's involved to make that happen?

If pretending to be a G1 is simply to allow the Desire to be able to use G1 specific application to show up when browing the Market, then it would seem that a better way would be to have NO segmentation at all, and every application turn up in one single market place regardless of what device is used - like the way it's done in iPhone.

If Cyanogen's work is applicable to all versions of Android, on all phones, then it would be fantastic. Is that the case?

Why would anyone want to use 1.0 though?

Another problem that I just read also bothers me. Read this article.. This openness and protected application may not be such a good thing after all from end user's perspective. Perhaps iPhone and WP7 are right in not making the firmware open to OEM and Carrier modification?? But then that leaves the questions of who is going to write all the drivers for every conceivable phones using Android. Google probably can't cater to every single phone hardware's drivers out there. If you leave it to the OEM, some may even leave out the necessary drivers, resulting in performance issues. Perhaps the drivers should be a completely separate install from the firmware so that each phone can still upgrade to newer versions as long as they have the driver installation tool for that phone? So, what I'm saying is it may be a better idea to make the firmware close, and expect all OEM to provide additional program for the drivers and OEM add-on programs rather than allowing them to have source code to the OS itself???

So, overall, I really can't see segmentation to be an advantage rather than a significant weakness.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
I think the problem with gmail is more than not being able to do copy and paste. The other problems are:

- It only supports gmail. Very few of my friends are using gmail (in fact can't think of anyone of them using it). Although I have gmail, it's seldom used. I have 5 other email accounts which would means gmail client is useless for me.

- I heard there's problem rendering colored pages correctly. Not sure of the details, may be you can tell me.

So you mean it works on all Android firmware and phones still?

Okay, if you rely on Astro to save email attachment, you would have to abandon non-gmail account right? What I'm looking for is not just being able to save attachments for a gmail account but to save attachement for ANY email account.

So, unless Astro works for All email accounts, All firmware, All phones, we don't really have a full solution yet. This is an area that I think google should fix in the next firmware release. Alternatively, some clever programmer should come out with a tool allowing such functionalities across all Android firmwares and segments.

Please excuse me if I miss anything here due to my newness to Android. Glad to have you around to help us understand the issue.
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
I don't use the included email app for alternate email addresses, but from the few times I did use it. I never had problems downloading anything (Images, zip, think that is as much as I ever got while testing it).

If I haven't made it obvious, I am not a business user so I won't know much about these things.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
So, let me make sure I understand it correctly. You're saying that:

1) Astro works on all version of firmware, as far as you know.

2) You had tried Astro on not just the gmail client but also the standard email client, supporting non-email account, and you could download all file types and save them.

If this is correct, then it's a good new. So glad to hear this.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Business phone comparision continued...

One of the most time consuming tasks for business users is to schedule meetings, conference calls, etc. Most of us do it the unproductive ways: send out email/send out sms/call and find out when everybody has a common time slot for a meeting. We need an easier and more productive way. As a meeting initiator, I want to:

1) Propose a few possible time slots

2) Invite participant(s) by email, sms message, wap, email+sms, email+wap efficiently. Participants does not even need to have a phone. I've seen some silly design which requires the participant to have the same software running on the same type of phone - the software designer must be having rocks in his head.

3) Automatically send out invitation once I have selected all the participants

4) Allows people invited to select time slot(s) acceptable to them and accept the invitation by email, sms messages etc.

5) The phone must automatically track for me how many have responded, and make confirmation of the final time, and inform the participants.

6) Allow one touch cancellation of events and automatic notification to the participants should the need arise.

7) Allows automatic entry of event into the calendar application.

iPhone : Yes, you can do this with a free App store application called Neatcall. See this demo.

Android:??
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
To MY knowledge this is correct, yes.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Does anyone else like to confirm this?

Edit: I just read through the Astro documentation on this link. It doesn't seem to say anything about it being able to download email attachments though. It does however allows browser to download files like in iPhone. Is this the Astro program that you're talking about or there is another one?
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Business use again - syncing outlook tasks

There is an indirect way to have iPhone tasks synced to outlook, via Toodledo-Outlook-Sync.

Detailed steps are described here:

http://danielcurran.com/freeware/how-to-sync-outlook-tasks-with-your-iphone-for-free/

Not perfect. I'd rather find a solution that do away with the middle layer.
[General Topics] vangrieg:
It's not just a middle layer thing, I also don't sync anything with Outlook, but with Exchange directly (with Push). This is important because things like Tasks and Calendar are edited not just by me, but also by administrative staff. I need to have things visible on my phone when somebody adds/edits something on the server.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
I think iPhone's full outlook/exchange capability is finally here

My bad. You had mentioned before that it's not outlook which interests you, but exchange with push. I should have remembered.

How about this?

http://web.me.com/rerlsoft/Rerlsoft/iMLite.html

iMlite is only for viewing. It is free so that users can test the compatibility with their outlook exchange before committing to buying one of the paid products. RERLSoft, the software vendor also sells three other software called iMExchange (Outlook Tasks& Notes&Out of office status), and iMTaks (Outlook Task only), or iMNotes(Outlook Notes only), which allows you create, edit, and view these items.

I don't use exchange, so I can't test it for you. Someone else with exchange might like to test. Sorry, the software is quite expensive. AUD9.99 for both, or AUD 8.99 for either just the note or just the task. I now remember that your wife has an iPhone and you use exchange, so you could do the testing with iMlite and report back the result. I hope it does PUSH. Otherwise, you just have to manually sync it whenever you use it.

Edit: in post 15 you only want to manually sync tasks, why ?

One more solution here which costs less.

http://www.tasktaskonline.com/TaskTask/TaskTask.html

Another solutions here:

http://www.macworld.com/appguide/app.html?id=65535&expand=false
[General Topics] Jack_R1:
Personally, I believe that this attempt at comparison is destined to fail miserably. Most people don't really spend hours online to correct the misinformed, and this threads will remain as "my take on what jailbroken iPhone with zillion of external apps can do against what I think generic Android seems to be able to do - don't know, never tried one, please correct where wrong" (with a hidden agenda/bias?), as demonstrated by the correction above. Especially not the people that really know the stuff for comparison.

On another post: SAP apps are just that - apps. They don't add anything to a phone to consider it a business phone, everything can be done through the Web - including banking etc.

P.S. The best Android SW coming is a big unknown. The best Android HW to come is scheduled to the end of the year - Dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon 8X72.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Comparing procedures for reverting to factory condition

Manufacturers typically void the warranty for phones already jailbroken or rooted. As any other manufactured products, there is a chance of manufacturing defects or post manufacturing product problems which necessitate the return and replacement of phones. One of the areas that I think we would be wise to consider is the ease of reverting to the state when the phone was delivered to us. This post describes the differences in procedures and relative complexities for the two platforms.

iPhone:

- Regardless of whether it is iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch whatever generation, the procedure for removing jailbreak is the same.

- The procedure is a) Connect device to iTune via USB. b) Click Restore firmware, done.

Android:

- While unrooting is possible, it is not possible to lock the bootloader again. Therefore, unlike iPhone, the is actually no procedure to restore back to the exact factory condition once it is rooted, since there is no know way still to relock the bootloader. Users might find themselves at the mercy and generosity of the hardware vendor in honoring the warranty.

- The unrooting procedure differ from device to device. G1 has its own unrooting procedure, Hero has its own. It is necessary to research and find out what applies to each phone individually.

- Here is a procedure for unrooting hero. Here is a procedure for G1. The procedure is quite complicated when compared to iPhone's. It will not deter me but for the less technically savvy users this might be a deterrent.

- Wiping the device only restore the phone to the original state of whatever ROM being used, not to the original factory ROM.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Comparing vendor support in firmware upgrade

In recent years, due to much more intense competitions among Google, Nokia, RIM, and Apple, no phone OS vendors could afford to stay stagnant in their firmware. In the case of iPhone, there is one major OS update every year, and about three other minor updates in between. Google similarly improves on their OS to bring in the missing functionalities and fix bugs reported by users quite frequently.

Support on Android:

- HTC has provided only 1.5 firmware to Hero and G2 Touch, and 1.6 firmware to Dream, Tatoo and Magic. Motorolla's backflip and Cliq are still on 1.5. LG's GW620 is still on 1.5. Although there has been pressure from users to their vendor to provide the latest firmware, response has been lukewarm at best it seems.

- Those with older firmware might not have all the important functionalities user are looking for, such as applications to storage card, pinch to zoom, multiple exchange support, etc, so staying with factory ROM is not always a feasible option.

-The only way alternative seems to be to use cooked ROM, from people like Cyanogen. Many cooked ROM version exist, but there is variations in terms of ROM quality, performance, driver support, and stability. Older device also has the problem of losing the better ROM cooks who might have migrated to newer devices. Unfortunately this is not helped by the extremely high number of new models coming out every year, attracting the cooks away.

- Some users on this forum commented that the only way to move on to the latest firmware is to dump their existing device and buy a new one. This lack of support has a direct impact on the phone's shelf life.

Support on iPhone:

- Every hardware variation (regardless of whether it is 3G, 3GS, 2G, iPod) generally get their respective firmware updated to the most current version. An exception to that has been made with OS4.0 which will not be released to iPhone 2G which is a three year old phone, but this statement remains true in general.

- Therefore, the shelf life of a phone could be prolonged.
[General Topics] enatefox:
just my opinion on the two

there is one flaw to your logic OP. The iphone (any Apple product) is in fact clown shoes. It squeeks, it has slide whistles and I believe the 3GS has bells however you are still left with clown shoes. Luckily, you have the pair to wear.

If Steve Jobs or that no talent ass clown that was on SNL tells you (any one) that there are no viruses for Mac you should ignore the copious reports on vulnerabilities and just continue to love Apple blind to reality. They did invent music and the phone after all. Such to say, the Android OS by default and not its superiority wins.

Instead of really bashing iPhone, I can just point out what Android offers instead. Freedom as in beer and freedom, the ability to run risque apps should one choose, a market the community has a say in, multitasking since 0.9, superior memory handling, swappable batteries, open source base means porting of standard tools such as strace, busybox and of course full blown desktop Linux via VNC (also VNC to that list) and no crappy ripped off closed source BSD derivative, I can actually write an app for Android that is in the language of my choosing using the tools I prefer and I think that's enough personally. Also, as an avid Linux enthusiast I'd be drawn towards an open source product over a closed source one ran by a crybaby who has a reporter's house raided by a task force to "recoverz muh phonez" because his employee lost it at a bar. I like having real wallpaper, not just lockscreen or in-call "pretty pictures." Out of the box USB mass storage support instead of needing an "app for that" to get some crappy FTP server or whatever because I don't have rights to the internal drive (okay I know we're talking root but for stock that sucks and anyone will agree). And Flash support.. did I miss something because I know I did.

Also you seem to favor points regarding enterprise-level resources. RIM (Blackberry) kills all other phones in terms of market share. There's a reason they have over 40% (projected to hit 43% by end of year) of the market. Love iPhone (you know this is XDA right?) all you want but if you laugh at Android moving from 2.5 to over 7% you are not accounting for it getting over 250% growth within a few months which is almost unheard of for pretty much any market. Bear in mind that sources are always lagging behind real time. The stats are coming in from beginning of year so estimates from January are just that. Being almost May, the numbers should be much more favorable to RIM and Android with falling scores for Windows and stagnating or falling scores for Apple. Especially because they both suck horribly for different reasons and people have more choices nowadays.

That's just my opinion anyway. Not saying I'm correct by any means. If I'm wrong, post sources that prove it.
[General Topics] er6ben:
Please shut up

Hey OP.....this is hands down the most stupidly self serving thread I have ever read on XDA.............and thats saying something because there is tons of self serving threads on XDA.

Please stop wasting peoples time, spreading dis-information and go buy a damn apple product.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Tell me which post, which sentense is dis-information, Mr "Only 2 Posts", if this is your real identity. Forgot your password again huh?

Seriously, the reason I sent out so many invitation to the Android expert is for them to come and participate, and in the process, stop me from getting away with posting misinformation. I'm here with high hope of seeing good things about Android and to get excited over the Supersonic, but I do not want to fool myself with untruthful praises to Android just to justify my purchase.
[General Topics] enatefox:
There's good reason that people love iPhones but apps drive sales and having more freedom for developers yield more and better apps which do affect the end user experience.

Works well for FOSS, GNU, etc.

These issues mainly are the OEMs' fault for proprietary setups, code, etc. With Froyo, Google is trying to circumvent slow responses from the vendors by letting core apps be updatable through the Market. That would help offset stupid moves like Motorola's decision to use Skyhook, ATTs "plan to fail" method of bloated crapware on their Android phones and so forth. If Apple did such a move (like block Google Maps) the users would have no say. Luckily Google made such services accessible via the browser. Open is good, I can rewrite something, customize to my liking and users benefit in the end. Besides this is regarding rooted phones which is not what a "typical" user would do so their level of comprehension regarding these issues is more relevant I believe.

Still agree here. The OOM is very efficient and I would rather choose my apps even if they are detrimental to performance than be told it's not on the Market because Apple thought it would slow things down. The memory handling can be customized quite well and even with a simple renice script. I don't use Apps2SD.

Still think it's relevant to users who root their phones and would like, for example Debian on it which requires ports of the necessary tools.

affects who makes apps and what they make which affects the end users.

They should. It's kind of a BFD in my opinion. Similar to Google's reasoning in no longer supporting the Chinese market but that's a long story.

I have an iPhone from work and wallpaper is crap.

dually noted.

it's the predominant phone let alone enterprise level apps. True out of the scope but still hard to split hairs against the two when RIM is superior in that degree I think.

Meant the general case of "you" as I know Apple doesn't feel too threatened right now. Everyone has their own opinions but I never heard a good one for iPhone. I will say at least it keeps the two competing which benefits users. And anything is better than Windows Mobile
[General Topics] slimslim:
Off topic:

as of right now, number of posts on this particular funny thread:

OP: 94 out of 156 (more than 60%) = iPhone publicity

Others: under 40% = lack of interest

I guess we got the message :)
[General Topics] :
Uhhh, man, are you really just that... stupid? I'm and end user and all the reasons he named are the EXACT reasons I don't want an iPhone or any other phone that's not Android. That's just me. I've asked several people around my college campus with myTouchs if they've rooted. Never get one who has, but they all tell me the same thing: they love it and never want anything different. Oh, forgot, they also tell me how that includes the iPhone. With everyone I talk to its: Yea, I'll have an iPod Touch to play with, but **** the phone. ('Cuse my French.) Ok, iPhone may have these "features"? I also saw several things wrong in OP.

WRONG! There are mods for this. Not going to cite, it's obvious you make your thesis before you research, so I'll leave this as a little learning experience.

Yes, and who actually uses a stock headset? Very, very few people do. I've NEVER owned ANY set of headphones I received with a music player or phone that lasted more than a month. I also have a set of headphones that have actual BASS! You're little iPhone have that? No?

That's the dumbest thing I've ever read in my life. Man, seriously? You want to ***** about THAT?! So, the tea at McDonals only had 3650 grains of sugar in it vs Burger Kings has 5942! You should go write an article about that now.

Who the hell would want to play video with screen off? Doesn't that completely contradict the whole idea behind VIDEO? Don't say to listen you your favorite song because you don't have it. Try looking at.... iMusic, Music Online, Pandora, blah blah blah. :/ Default music player doesn't play video? You're right! THAT'S WHY THEY PUT A VIDEO PLAYER IN THERE. :O ORLY? YARLY!

You might as well just get rid of this thread, man. If you were to take 10 minutes in researching your thesis you would have never wanted to post this thread. Android is a developer's OS. iPhone is for little snobby... meh... who are just trying to keep up with fads and want to look like they have money.

=]
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
I did try to have a separate post per area of comparison didn't I. Yes that would result in high post count from me.

I like to see more active participation from everyone. However I reject your statement that others lack interest in this area of discussion. I think the high hit count proves that. The inteest level is comparable to the Opera Mini 5 thread which was started three days earlier. Opera Mini 5 is an area of high interest to everyone.

If you have no interest in this area, just feel free to read the other threads. I don't believe you've run out of reading materials and I don't think anyone is putting a gun on your head to force you to read this thread.

I won't continue to feed trolls so take it ad my only response to this conversation.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Adobe flash video sites

iPhone: No and never will.

However, it is also interesting to note that some flash video sites are now able to play their videos on iPad by installing some kind of translated program, so that the flash videos could play on iPad and iPhone without any need to redo their websites's videos in HTML5.

See http://www.gadgetvenue.com/apple-ipad-flash-video-ripcode-04140735/

Android: Yes but only if you have Froyo (Android 2.2). The actual performance is still not known. Also unknown is whether and how those keyboard controlled flash games could be played on touch screen like Supersonic. In addition, it is unknown still how mouseover functions would work without a mouse.
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
When did I become an evangelist? If I remember correctly 90% of my posts include words like "to MY knowledge", "As far as I know", and "But ask someone else to make sure". Nothing I say is ever set in stone (Maybe that was in the one post I left those words out, who knows?).

Not looking for a fight, just noticing something said about me (Or was it Mr. Start new account?).
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
No. It's not you. It's someone who's pushing Android on the WP7 forum. You're not an evengelist in my mind. I see you as a great contributor.