yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[General Topics] vangrieg:
Well, if you need Flash support then the decision isn't that difficult, is it? :)

Speaking about video in general, it's much more ambiguous. That is, there's no platform that deserves praise in video codec support department out of the box. Third party applications exist, but they all have their set of problems. I gather yxFlash is the best solution for both the iPhone and Android ATM, is that right?
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
If flash is the ONLY factor to consider, then no question about which phone is a better choice, yes. But I think as with any product evaluation, everyone needs to put a weight to each of the factors and consider them all before deciding.

True that performance is a big issue in video playback. Frame drops, high CPU usage, and stability during playback are usual problems. But I must say that after google change the format to H.264 for youtube, playing them has become so much faster for me.

I don't think yxflash solution on iPhone is anywhere nearly as good as H.264. It is jerky at best.

I wonder about the performance of flash 10.1 video playback. I know we won't know this for another few more days or week, but I hope it is a serious improvement over what we had on winmo phone in the past. If it is still going to work like a snail, then I won't be tempted to watch those videos anyway.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
We've frequently encountered narrow minded bigots on this forum attacking other members for posting review like information on iPhone. One of their favourite phrases is "Nobody goes to an iPhone forum to sing praises about Android so why are you discussing iPhone on an Android site like XDA?".

On the surface this statement appears to be a justified enforcement of some sorts of courtesy rules. In reality, the statement isn't even correct. Such bigots often have a misplaced belief that they have a God given duty to save the members here from defecting to other devices. Such people never engage in discussing points about the phone itself. Often they do not know what the facts are and don't care either. They do not usually read very widely nor venture into the iPhone forums themselves. Ad a result they do not realize that others DO in fact positively discuss non-iPhone mobile devices on iPhone forums.

One such post is given by the following link:

http://www.macworld.com/article/150...ncredible.html?lsrc=rss_weblogs_iphonecentral

I actually gained a lot by reading the above article. It is a good review and it does not put Android into any bad light whatsoever. More importantly, nobody comes around bahaving like PoisonWolf and his gangs to attack the poster.

I encourage everyone to click on that link to see how positively the so called iPhone fanboy can see non-iPhone devices, and hopefully change our usual stereotype of iPhone owners.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Is lack of flash support going to be a big problem for iPhone users?

The above question has been in my mind for a while now during this comparison exercise.

I guess each person places different degree of importance to flash. For me I do want to watch the news video, but it don't need to watch the videos on porn websites. The inability to watch some news video is definitely a minus in my book. Having said that, I would not watch the flash video if performance is not up to scratch.

However, I'm at the same time encouraged by the following article just released today:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/01/h-...ed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

It show that 66% of all Internet videos today are already in H.264 format from an authoritative source. It also shows the trend continuing to rise.

This is great news.

Part of this article says this which is very educational for many of us: The last sentence is news to me.

The formats can be confusing between containers and codecs. FLV is the Flash container with the old H.263 codec. Flash VP6 is the Flash container with the VP6 codec. H.264 is a codec that is utilized in a number of different containers (.FLV, .MP4, .MOV) and on Apple mobile devices and when deployed by browsers for HTML5. Microsoft just announced that IE will use H.264 as the default codec for HTML5. And, Google will be soon offering the VP8 codec as open source which will add another formidable flag in the format wars.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Widgets and notification comparision

INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

Widgets are tiny little applications that usually run on the desktop or lockscreen of the device.

Properly designed, widgets can make the device interesting and "demonstrable" to friends.

While being demonstrable does make the device extremely attractive, the FUNCTIONS of what those applications could achieve should not be overlooked, especially for users seeking to maximise his personal productivity. User seeking greater efficiency and productivity might want quick access to information such as time/date, weather, new SMS, new emails, missed call notifications, quick access to google search, to do/tasklist for the day, notifications from any of applications (such as warning for a police trap coming from the Trapspter application, alerts from facebook application, alerts from game applications, alerts from applications on discount or going free in the app store, alert for missed calls in the VOIP application, alerts from travel applications information user of flight cancellation/delay, alerts from social networking application like Fring for new messages just received, alerts for to do item about to come up, alerts for calendar items and appointments, alerts for severe weather such as earthquake/hailstorm/flood).

Another important consideration in my view is the smoothness of the widget application and effects of the application on battery life.

HOW CAN WE COMPARE BEFORE I BUY, MY DILEMMA.

As I mentioned in my first post, I'm primarily comparing between HTC Supersonic and iPhone HD. While this significantly narrow down the many different types of widgets on Android phones, it also introduces another dilemma, which is that none of us could play with the phone yet at this stage. So, certain assumptions would have to be made, and I'm making the assumption that it will use the same Sense UI as the HTC Incredible. Problem is I don't even have access to Incredible here in Sydney. So, I would have to rely on youtube presentations to know how it works. It is IMO not possible to have a good feel on the reliability (e.g how error and bug free), performance (especially under heavy data volume), and battery life from youtube, but still will provide me with a good feel from UI perspective. I hope that at some later stage when the GSM version of Supersonic is released in Australia, I could spend some time playing with it (although it would still be difficult to know the reliability and performance with just a couple of hours in the Telco shop)

As for iPhone HD, since Apple does not have widgets at all, I will be using available third party applications. That unfortunately is not going to be easy because there are several popular widget like applications, all quite popular and have their own fans. Just for this exercise, I will compare it against Lock Info, although Quick Widget and Intelliscreen are also quite popular.

So, in the next post, I'll be looking at HTC Sense on the Incredible.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Question: What does Android notification bar include?

I just read the user manual of an Android phone, and in the PDF user guide, I saw this:

Phone status & notifications

The status bar at the top of the screen contains icons

that tell you about messages and phone status. To

view your notifications, touch the status bar and drag it

down. Icons on the right tell you about phone status:

Does that mean that the pull down notification includes only email, sms, voice mail, and missed calls and nothing else? What about todo items, calendar reminders, and third party application notifications? Would they be handled by some kind of pop up messages by the application itself? What if they run in the background, or if they have been forced closed? Does flight cancellation notification requires the application to be kept alive in order for user to receive notification?
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
If the 3rd party developer wants there to be a notification, they can do so.
[General Topics] themapleboy:
there are widgets for everything music, photos, weather, news, if you like sense you can flash it onto your phone (after root). there i an app that allow's you to password lock anything. personally i see it as my G1 can do anything my 3G can and vice versa, but iphone has more games.

personally i feel too restricted on the iphone (even with cydia) i just wish i could make it look like a one of a kind phone................. but i cant (just from a screen shot you can always tell its iphone).

my vote android wins just from experience, but again thats just my personal bias and opinion.

ps. did you really discuss Methods of task switching by showing active tasks and choosing it......you run an app to let you pick what app you want to run? kinda redundant

on iphone press home pick app

on android press home pick app

simple, easy and fast
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Notification bar

Thanks JAguirre.

1) Are you aware of any third party ToDo application that puts the number as well as description of of due tasks (and perhaps gives option to also include task without due dates, as well as tasks due in next few specified days) on to the notification bar? It would be excellent to be able to swipe down the taskbar anywhere in the system to have instant access to these information.

2) IN GENERAL, are third party softwares (e.g. flight tracking software, trapster, weather warning) ALREADY using the notification bar?

Or is the answer "not yet but technically they could do it if they want to"? What I'm more interested is as a user intending to buy a new phone, can I expect to see these features already operational without waiting for developers to issue new version of their software.

3) If users decide to stick to the stock calendar application, is there a way to have the appointments for the day shown on the notification bar so that user can more easily see those info?

Perhaps I had too high an expectation for the notification feature for Android. If it only covers mail, sms, and phone, what do you see as the advantage it has over say iPhone?
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
HI themapleboy, welcome to the thread. Good to see more people with experience in both devices actively participating on this thread. The more participation from experienced users from both camps, the more all the readers would benefit from it.

I've only seen the music/photo/weather/news widgets from HTC. Are you talking about non-HTC ones?

This app that lets you password lock anything is an application rather than widget, right?

I'm not sure if it is true that G1 can do anything your 3G can do. If you read this thread properly, you would have discovered that they are many things Android phones can do but iPhone can. And vise versa.

I'm interested to know what are the things you couldn't do on your iPhone. Could you share? I too, have something that I can't do on my iPhone. For example, I can't forward mail to a group. But I'm very interested to know your list, as I'm sure it would be different from mine.

That's okay. Aren't we all? As long as you remain courteous toward others with a different bias and opinion, we can all be happy and learn from each other. You seems like a decent and nice bloke. I hope to see you participating more.

No, there is no need to run any application to switch task. The installation of various task switcher basically alter the behaviors of the OS, but there is no task switching program per se.

There are many methods for task switching, you're right. I had not compared it properly yet. I'll do so right away. For some reasons I thought I had already done it but until your post, I didn't realise that I had missed it out. Thanks for pointing this out.

The next post will describe task switching in iPhone.
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
Unfortunately it is more of a "If the developer wants to, it is available to be used."

I don't use any of the apps you mentioned so I can't give you a definitive answer but I will ask if others do, and if these apps implement a notification.

As to whether or not you can get upcoming events from calendar, it will notify you of when events are upcoming (You can set how far before). However, the calendar widgets included in the phone can also do this.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Glad to hear it at least cover the calendar. The user guide that I read failed to mention this point so glad that it is not excluded.

I have two more questions coming into my mind regarding wizards:

1) Talking bout th e calendar widget, does it share the same database as the stock calendar application?

2) Are wizards threated like an applications as far as task switching goes? For example, if I have been using the Calendar wizards, and then I want to go to the stock music application to change the genre of the songs I'm hearing. Can I use the task swither to go to music, and use the same task switcher to come back to the calendar wizard? Or are wizards completely ignored as task list items?

From the end user perspective, a full screen music playing wizards and a full screen music application looks almost the same. So, switching to either one should have the same procedure and feel, or rather this is what I would like to see if possible. Consistency in user interface, look and feel, are quite highly valued by me.

I need to think deeper into this wizard thingy. On the desktop, we have wizards because the nature of hugh screens allows multiple windows, and wizards to be displayed simultaneously. This is not the case for mobile devices, where each application completely fill the entire screen. I think wizards' roles should be limited to only two areas:

1) As a fanciful wallpaper, to make the device look good and interesting. To make it demo-able.

2) To let users have extremely easy and constant access to certain information from anywhere, including while users are using applications. The notification bar has provided some of these information, but there are more information that can be displayed at a quick glance from anywhere. From the lockscreen, on the main screen, and quickly pop up from any applications. Information that people like to quickly access to might include to do list due, calendar appointment, time, weather conditions, etc, etc.

3) Very high frequency usage applications requiring users to have constant access to those application. A good example of this is twitter, where users might want to make a response without exiting what he's currently doing.

I think it does not make sense to make application into wizards. It has no advantage over it being in the form of application, other than introducing inconsistency in user experience.

What do you think?
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
Yes, widgets are an "extension" of an application. They share the same data and such, are located in the same app, however, widgets are a way to quickly see something without ever launching the app (as I'm sure you know).
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
JAguire, I edited the post, sorry to get you to re-read it.

I also forgot to ask if there is any ToDo application that uses the notification bar yet, with ability to sync to outlook and exchange.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Got it. It makes sense to have that kind of widgets. It does not make sense to make them take the role of a full featured application. For this reason,I would be unlikely to use the photo album, photo frame, music application, etc. However, I would keep the weather program because it makes such a wonderfully nice and demonstrable wallpaper. Although I must say it is not very clever way to use the screen's precious real estate on a mobile device. As a supernice wall paper, I think one page is sufficient. The other 6 pages could be repurposed for more effective application launching. Just my own thoughts on what makes sense to me. If wizard cannot provide information to me in the default page, then it would not have served it's "quickly see something" purpose anyway. Others of course have different viewpoints here.
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
Regarding #2. Most of the things you mentioned can be done/or already done (Namely the Time and weather conditions). The calendar appointments, as I said, can show in the notification bar a set amount of time before the event however, there is not a constant notification showing the next event at all times. The time is omni present in Android, only leaving when it is beneficial to the end user to have a full screen (Games, an option if you want, videos, gallery, etc.). A third party app is able to show weather in the status bar at all times (Or the notification bar, whichever you prefer), one application off the top of my head is Weather Widgets (Name of the app).

Regarding the second half of #2 however, some things just don't warrant a full application. Some widgets, work great by themselves. One such thing can be a widget which shows you your text messages (This is not in stock Android like it is in Sense). I don't want to download another messaging application, just so I can use the widget. This creates clutter and is an overall bad experience for the end user who wants to mix and match applications/widgets.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Yes, SMS also fall into the third reason I mentioned. It is required on an ad hoc unexpected basis whenever SMS message comes in or user might want to very quickly send out a new message. Message may pop up while the phone is switched off, while we're in the middle of using another application etc. So it's necessary for some high frquency SMS user to be able to instantly respond without going to the main SMS application. But m not sure if HTC's SMS widget address those scenarios effectively though.
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
Not sure if this capability is available from a widget where ever you happen to be at the time (It is from homescreen but not from Music per se). However, an app like smspopup will bring up a reply box when you recieve a message, the stock messaging app will have a notification in the status bar, and the widget will update itself.

This is one of the reasons that Android is so customizable, you can have 50 different ways to accomplish the same thing, but each way is your own.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
True. SMS pop up box will generally let user do that already so it is not strictly necessary to have a widget anymore although a widget is just another way.

Personally I prefer to simply respond with the pop up box which is part of the main application itself, but I know high frequency users love being able to use special hand gesture anywhere to bring up specialize SMS plugin to compose message coupled with smiley symbol capabilities and there applications for users wanting to do that.

Which is the best todo third party application that uses the notification bar and sync with outlook and exchange?

Coming up I'll provide some description of what widget and notification customizations are possible on iPhone. There are so many different ways and I do it differently every now and then but I'll at least describe the way I do it now. But now I have to be away for a while meeting my buddies for golf.
[General Topics] Barkleyfan:
Sense isn't the end-all home for android. As you can see there are various widgets and shortcuts on the home screens available. In the second pic down, there is a scrollbar you can load with any shortcuts you like, I chose contacts. You can group them however you'd like, and I've run as deep as 20 contacts on one scroll bar with flawless performance. While I applaud the efficiency of Iphone on certain tasks and simplicity, the monotony is murder. All the little icons blend together for me and become quite forgettable. Folders can also be placed on the homescreens natively, but I'm partial to the scroll bars. There is also a gesture search widget. Spell out a app or a contact, and it acts like predictive text with every letter you trace (gesture) pulling up a list of likely candidates. It's really a happening UI.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
Barkleyfan, thanks for sharing how you configure your widget and desktop.

Is you set up not based on Sense? What phone and firmware are you using? I'm always of the impression that Sense's widget is the sexiest of all widgets for Android. Is this impression not correct is your view? Edit: I think you mentioned before that yours is moto droid, right? I'm not aware of what the differences are between Moto Droid and HTC Sense, but I personally prefer Sense myself, but I respect your preference too.

There is a global search screen on iPhone as well. Too bad it can't input with voice there, but it search a lot more than what Android does I think. The search includes:

- Web search (new in OS 4.0)

- Wikipedia search (new in OS 4.0)

- Search for contact name

- Search for applications installed on the phone

- Search for music's name, artist, or album name

- Search for podcast

- search for video

- search for audiobooks

- search for notes name and within notes.

- search for mails and text within the mails

- search for calendar items

This is how the global search screen looks like. The six icons are for the most recently used apps.

I believe that Android's global search is a subset of the above, am I right?

Putting application shortcuts is fine for limited number of applications. If you have hundreds like I have, it becomes inefficient, unless there is something similar to Overboard in iPhone, IMO.

In any case, my own thoughts on what I personally look for is described in detail in the last post. I've posted how mine looks like after your post. Hope that dispels any notion that iPhone is monotonous and boring. It is actually endless customization possible for people who likes to change the look and feel of the phone often. We covered some of that in post 216.
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
A copy cat weather widget on iPhone :-)

An animated weather imitation widgets for iPhone. :D

[youtube]U6SkwWOWCkU[/youtube]
[General Topics] eaglesteve:
This is not a widget. It's a weather program on the App Store, and does not require JB.

[youtube]1YyT0vRPWOw&feature=related[/youtube]
[General Topics] JAguirre1231:
I got as many as I could, this should cover most of what you had written here (up until the 3rd party support where I didn't feel like downloading every app). Some things, like Facebook, ARE there BUT I didn't get the screenshot in time and opened the app removing the notification. I also added some random widgets to the homescreen.
[General Topics] karnovaran:
Sexiest ≠ most functional. Sense widgets are among the most polished visually but not necessarily the most useful. There are also dozens of top-notch widgets on the market that rival any Sense counterpart.

Sense is really an entire overlay on top of "stock" Android. It not only adds widgets, but a new contacts system, dialer, mail client, and launcher. Those pieces are proprietary to HTC and static, whereas the stock Android contacts and other components have been modified to allow significant customization by the wonderful community here.

I occasionally dabble with Sense but always come running back to CyanogenMod for its speed and flexibility.