[Touch Cruise General] cruiserrr:
Hi all,

I have been testing android for the last couple of months and I wanted to share with those of you who did not dare or bother to try android or did so but some time ago. I do not pretend to discover anything, simply give some info to those curious as I was a few months ago...The post has not much to do with wm6.5 development so maybe should be moved elsewhere, I post here because it is where in the past I read questiosn and answers about this question.

Android Pros:

Wonderful interface and navigation concept: graphics, scrolling, effects, overall resolution and touch experience I think it is much much better, Multitasking but the UI acts more as an iPhone or Treo, when you leave an application you are exiting it, from a navigation point of view. Another thing I like is the fresh concept of the phone: the notification bar and slide-down courtain, the lock screen, the keyboard are much better. On the side of the sotware is a cloud2.0 phone, since lots of applications tend to connect to the itnernet to fetch contents, context or whatever. this means you do not need to configure or copy so many things each time you flash. It has changed a lot since the first time I tried it: wifi works perfectly, GPS and car kit works perfecly, music, etc. It is very thumb friendly, You can install it as the only OS of the phone ("nand" install) or to run it from wm ("haret") install. They work pretty well both. You can even find dual bootloaders so you can choose which OS to load each time

Android Cons:

Our beloved Polaris are old for this trip !! Android seems to have a high consumption of RAM compared to wm6.5. Regarding storage it has been solved using the sdcard as internal storage but it is not perfect since the sd card can become corrupt much more easily than in Windows. The kernels are ported from Vogue (dzo) and this means no front camera, as Vogue does not have it. BT files transfer to PC & music transfers to headsets have limitations also. Another limitation is for people like me, wanting to have installed dozens and dozens of programs, ready to use: in my experience it seems this takes a lot more of RAM and transit to the cache or sd than in Windows so this means with a 100 programs the device is almost ununsable (on the other hand, with 15 apps is 1.000 times more fluid than windows). Another con (or pro) is the learning curve of the lynux/android new environment. Seems quite easy to modify a rom, simply adding apks (cabs) to the tar file and signing it but scripting, customization, registry, programming seems to me much more complex (to make an analogy, wm6.5 is visual basic and android is java). Another big con is the shorter battery (it is shorter and the phone is more oriented to wireless connections) and the need to have a data plan. With the radio I have used for the last years, the signal is worst.

Not pros or cons but differences:

Android is great for you if you use google (I do): gmail and contact integration is great. Of course, the same goes for WM6.5 with Outlook. Android is great if you have a data plan. If you don't (I don't) you can still use it but you better be sure you now how to cut traffic to the internet. Android stock of apps are oriented to localitzation services (Gps, camera recognition of whatever is focusing, social networks, etc) while wm seems to have still a larger stock of apps, more oriented to productivity, PIM, etc. For example, wm has much better off-line navigation programs since android are all connected to gmaps or whatver.

From the point of view of people enjoying cooking roms, customizing, etc. Android+Polaris seems a step hill to climb but Polaris+wm6.5 has not a long horizon ahead. Well, I hope this helps some of you to decide it it is worth to test android or not and stik or not to the Polaris.

enjoy your devices !