[aZa]

@abhib : froyo looks brilliant !! i guess i will just wait for i5800...

[sgiitk]

By the looks of it Android is the future.

One must remember prediction is dangerous: IBM Chief thought that the world will no need more than three computers, and Gen Curtis Lemay said that the n-bomb will never work.

[srishiva]

Android has succeeded in making a linux based OS become mainstream. I think its the early phase. What will happen after a year or so when we have many Android phones in the market? What will differentiate them?

Most already look the same except the model names.

[amitk26]

Well this is precursor for features , I still understand that release date is May 28 which may be pushed to early June.

I was little surprised that DELL did not announce FroYo based device as they were preferred premier partner of Google , A typical phone maker would have easily done it.

FroYo Fixes 3 main issue which I Noticed and reported here in my Android 2.1 review on Spica.

1. Application backup , This is really important when you pay money for Apps. I understand they will need to bring Application DRM solution as well to protect revenues.

2. Installing applications on SD card : Actually this was expected in 2.1 but was pushed in to next release. From Linux kernel and file system point of view once you have mounted RFS or any other file system on external memory card there is actually no difference if you launch the executible using fork()-> execv() from internal file system path or extrnally mounted one so do not know why it was restricted earlier
May be some issue with Application Management in User mode.

3. Android fan sites mention 450% improvement from other releaible sources I got the figure as 178% , Actually this depends lot on the benchmark used.
If benchmark has large vector operations and multiplications then it will look really good as now Neon instruction set is used.
In more real life cases you will get lower figures so I will wait for official release for final figure early releases do not tell full story.

None the less earlier unoptimized J2ME VM was around 900 - 1000 times so still a gap in performance is there.

EDIT : There is another parallel announcement that Samsung , Verizon and Citrix tied up and Samsung Moment is Citrix certified so can be used in enterprize segment.
This is one area where Blackberry and Apple score big time.
At this moment I do not know how useful a citrix certified moment phone would be but a positive sign.

Only if they can bring in AV sharing and collaborative applications like Cisco Webex on Android it will be meaningful for business use.

Regards

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by amitk26

Well this is precursor for features , I still understand that release date is May 28 which may be pushed to early June.

Well SDK is indeed released saw the link so I was wrong.

[kri$hna]

I have flashed froyo on my HTC Hero (CDMA) and its really amazing... blazing fast web browser and a clean layout of pages is what we get. Audio was not working in calls, because the kernel drivers arent totally updated to work with my device.

but from the little sneak peak i could get, i would say froyo is realling taking it further away from smart phone OS !! If only we could get an official android froyo device in india soon

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

Froyo officially announced.

Speedy Android 2.2 hits with tethering, push framework, more

[vjoy3]

Visiting the thread after few days gap and glad to see so many folks showing interest in android. Looks like even the dooms day sayers are all finally falling in place to agree that Android may indeed be the future and may provide a third option besides OS 4 or Symbian. After all the news that android may be overtaking iPhone in US market share may not be a PR stunt as proclaimed by some .
Just look at the number of queries on Symbian/iPhone vs Android on the phone threads on tbhp.

BTW, read somewhere that even the ugly corby may also come out with an android flavor now.

Lenovo too now an android phone ÁªÏëÖйú_Òƶ¯»¥Áª_ÀÖPhone_ÀÖPhone
The phone is based on the same processor as on N1 but runs the Android 1.6 or Donut. Given the high end CPU and 512 MB RAM, looks like they have plans for upgrade to Froyo?. Also heard that at China Telecom Day (May 17th), they got more than 10 million units pre-orders!!!.

BTW, this chinese phone has google's version of android and not some Chinese offshoot / kandroid . Am sure this news and given the fact that they got such a huge pre-order will trigger another bunch of crap on evils of google and inefficiencies of android.

Other day happened to revisit kandroid and read translations of the pages there and was amused to see that it was mostly an effort to rewrite the documents pages into Korean language for the benefit of those who did not understand english.

Vijay

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

1. How does one back up addressbooks on android phones on a GNU/Linux system (like Ubuntu / Debian / Fedora etc)? wammu/gammu sites do not have any mention of android.

2. Has anybody tried flashing the OS / image from one manufacturer on hardware from another manufacturer? I ask this because somebody mentioned that SE may not support one version of their HW once the next series is launched.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by vjoy3

Visiting the thread after few days gap and glad to see so many folks showing interest in android. Looks like even the dooms day sayers are all finally falling in place to agree that Android may indeed be the future and may provide a third option besides OS 4 or Symbian.

Android has improved is a fact and you have improved by saying it is an option not the only one isn't it ?

Originally Posted by vjoy3

BTW, read somewhere that even the ugly corby may also come out with an android flavor now.

Ugly ( sic) coby(s) can have Android once Android RAM requiremnts go down to KBs.

FYI a CDMA phone with MMS , E-mail , Social networking kind of features is fully possible and being marketed in 384KB RAM footprint. Android is still far away from that. Android 2.2 BOM cost exceeds the MRP of the low cost phones.
Weather you like or not such phones are far more technically challenging then adding a Java shell on Linux kernel with modifications.

Originally Posted by vjoy3

BTW, this chinese phone has google's version of android and not some Chinese offshoot / kandroid . Am sure this news and given the fact that they got such a huge pre-order will trigger another bunch of crap on evils of google and inefficiencies of android.

Google fanboy alert.

[srishiva]

Read the interview of the Android creator wherein he says technical developments will be fast paced. He was replying to the question on why so many releases in short time.
I dont see any great innovation from them. They are just catching up and are doing it fast. They can however wait for couple of months and release a version which is at par with others. It has already created too many versions and incompatible UIs

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

1. How does one back up addressbooks on android phones on a GNU/Linux system (like Ubuntu / Debian / Fedora etc)? wammu/gammu sites do not have any mention of android.

If your phoen is google experience phone you can sync your contacts with gmail and then on new phone synch again with Gmail. Till now OMA Active Sync support is limited in Android.

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

2. Has anybody tried flashing the OS / image from one manufacturer on hardware from another manufacturer? I ask this because somebody mentioned that SE may not support one version of their HW once the next series is launched.

[/quote]
Will work if two manufacturers are using exact CPU and board configuration, Even if CPU is same for example Qualcomm Snapdragon in case of Motorola Moment and some SE phone the board design and memory map will be entirely different. So you need to atleast recompile for new memory map and also kernel need to change for the new board design.

Will not work straight out of the box most of the time
Remember you are not dealing with an X86 PC.

In PCs boot time is high because a lots of possible drivers are loaded at boot time keeping multiple possible configurations , In Embedded system the possibility of hardware change is done away with and the OS boots with only the required drivers as per board design.

[dr.faramroze]

WM 6.5 is supposed to be better than Android Eclair. A new version of Android Eclair is due this month. It is a boring UI compared to WM or S60v5. There are os maniacs who have tried Hero into WM 6.1/5.

At this moment we cannot assume Android to be the future because Microsoft will not make its WM 7 sdk available to existing roms and devices, as Ms Natasha, Microsoft Asia head, mobile communications, said, they want an all new concept which spells quality experience. It appears WM 7 will give a tough one to all global os systems. An all new os platform wm7 only on devices which have a search, back and home button.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by dr.faramroze

At this moment we cannot assume Android to be the future because Microsoft will not make its WM 7 sdk available to existing roms and devices, as Ms Natasha, Microsoft Asia head, mobile communications, said, they want an all new concept which spells quality experience. It appears WM 7 will give a tough one to all global os systems. An all new os platform wm7 only on devices which have a search, back and home button.

My evaluation of WM7 is not so positive whatever MS says.
It has following major shortcomings because of which no Major OEM vendor will bet on it.

1. MS is defining a standard Chassis ( Processor , RAM and peripherals ) for the WM7 this is very close to commodity PC model.
2. There can be no customization from OEM with out MS approval.
3. Application Lifecycle is restrictive , An old feature phone has better application management.

Actually speaking one of the reason of Android picking 9.6% market this year compared to 1% last year is OEM moving away from windows OS.
This does not mean WM was any significant in recent past.

So in Nutshell WM 7 will be popular with Tier 2 OEM and ODM who can not do any R&D for customizations.

Also whatever they call all new is not so appealing visually or performance wise to what people already had.

[muni]

The Android is getting bigger,bolder and louder and I may end up buying one in a couple of months. Leaning towards samsung at the moment.

@amitk26: Do you have any information whether Galaxy Spica i5700 will get the Froyo 2.2 as the 2.1 has been just out.The price of the mobile seems quite VFM comparitively though.

Will Samsung ditch spica owners ( like it usually does) or it will all boil down to the hardware not supporting the firmaware version or not.

I see a lot of exploitation happening in the name of android OS where many phones are abandoned without giving proper updates. All in the name of Business sense milking more money by bringing out more models and forcing people to buy more phones.