Toolbox or Swiss Army Knife?
I just added a new gadget to my bag, a Barnes & Noble Nook ereader. I had been waiting for a decent ereader to drop below the $200 mark. I had been waiting to order a Kobo, which is $149. But, the Nook deal turned my head. The Kobo has neither wifi or 3G wireless, only USB. The Nook has all three. I read a lot. Books, magazines, web articles, PDF articles and books, etc. I usually am carrying a couple of magazines and a book in my bag most of the time. Right now I am in the middle of 4 different books, 3 technical and 1 photography. I’ve been looking to consolidate my reading material for a while.
With the addition of the Nook, I carry at least four gadgets with me to work each day, six some days. I have my T-Mobile G1 Android phone in my pocket at all times. I have my Apple iPod Nano (5th generation) to listen to music in the car, gym, and office and to listen to podcasts in the car and gym. I got this for my birthday late last year. It is one of my most used gadgets. Then there is my hand-held amateur radio. This is a 1.5 watt VHF/UHF transceiver that I carry in my bag. it’s smaller than my phone. I can hit the local repeaters with it, or listen to NOAA weather radio, etc. Occasionally, I carry my personal laptop. And once in a while one of my two GPS units, usually my Garmin Nuvi 205W, if I am off to some IT vendor event. And now I add the Nook.
As many people have noted, an iPhone can replace the G1, the iPod, the Nook, the GPS, and the laptop in some cases. There is no substitute for the hand-held transceiver. I will admit that smart phones, both Apple and Android, are very capable. I use mine to run a variety of unique apps that take advantage of the phones capabilities. But, it’s primary purpose is to be a phone. If it doesn’t do that well, it’s not a useful tool. Yes, it can play music, and an iPhone can sync up with my iTunes library. But, the amount of time I use my iPod means that my phone will have to live on a charger all day. Same with navigation. For a short trip across town, it’s fine. For hiking, no. For cross country travel, not without a car charger.
As for ereading, I have used my phone, my previous phone and Palm devices, and my laptop. Did they work? Yes. Was it the best way to read ebooks? No. Not even close. Between battery life, screen quality, and reader software they can’t compare to a dedicated device.
I haven’t even mentioned photography. The new phones are coming equipped with 5+ megapixel cameras, HD video recording, and now even photo/video editing capabilities. I still carry my 15+ pounds of photo gear when I need it, or a good point and shoot. I still can’t accept the quality of photos from most smart phones. Although the iPhone and new Android phones have much improved cameras and they will replace the point and shoot compact cameras for many (most?) people.
I am very particular about buying good tools that do the job I need. And, I have yet to find an all-in-one electronic gadget that will replace my collection of single purpose tools and do as good a job. There are too many compromises to fit that functionality into a mobile device. Battery life is still the biggest issue that I see. My iPod goes for 3 or 4 days with heavy usage, my Nook 7+ days, my DSLR 600+ photos, GPS lasts for a full day with constant use on a long trip. My phone can barely last a day unless I set the email client to only check email hourly, I turn off 3G data, I dim the screen to the minimum, I turn off vibrate, and I make few calls.
I realized I have the same issue with hand and power tools at home. I have metric and English socket sets and wrench sets rather than one of the universal tools, “As Seen On TV”. I have 6 different hammers, each with a set of tasks. I have innumerable drill bits, for different materials. I have 3 sizes of Vise-Grips to fit the job. I have pliers galore. I also have two multi-tools. One is in my pocket. It is small, with scissors, knife blade, and several other small tools I rarely use. I really need a good pocket knife. The other multi-tool gets carried along camping and fishing and traveling as a last resort tool when “real” tools are not available.
I can make do when I need to. I can use the tools and materials at hand to get a job done. When I have to make do, it’s a frustrating process. I spend my time fighting with “tools” to get the job done. With the proper tools, I can focus on the task and not making the tool work for the task. The task gets done quicker and with better quality, with the proper tools.
It won’t be long before I need a big red rolling tool chest for my electronic tools.
My New G1
It’s actually the same T-Mobile G1 i’ve had since last November. But, it acts like a new, better phone.
How?
By rooting it and flashing it with a modded ROM.
Why now?
I’ve been annoyed by how sluggish my phone has been responding. It has been slow to acknowledge touch screen input, and even the hard buttons. This has gotten worse as I have added new apps to the phone. Some of the apps are running background tasks that are sucking up CPU cycles, most are just occupying the limited memory of the G1. Less available memory, less performance.
There are a lot of articles/posts/etc. on the internet with instructions to ‘root’ your G1. This opened up all kinds of hacking opportunities, but doesn’t address many real features. Plus, the process was complex, error prone, and tedious. So, I stuck with my stock phone with the OTA updates.
A couple of days ago I ran across an article on lifehacker: Five Great Reasons to Root Your Android Phone. The number 1 reason? Performance boost. But, the best part was a link to blog post: How to Root a T-Mobile G1 and MyTouch3G Android Phone, which detailed the easy two step root method, as well as the traditional downgrade root method. The instructions were clear, complete, correct, and not written for a Linux kernel hacker.
While looking through the instructions and checking out the links to other posts/sites, I found the 6th great reason to root your G1, App2SD. If you use the right ROM (Cyanogen!), and partition your SD card appropriately, new apps are installed on the SD card keeping your main memory on the phone free, which helps performance.
So, I charged my phone, gathered microSD cards, card reader, card adapter, usb cable, Macbook Pro, charger, Laz-E-Boy, and beverage.
I won’t go through the details. It went fairly smooth and fairly quick. Except for the ring tones. There was one. Apparently, the Cyanogen ROM does not include the original ring tones in the ROM, they have to be loaded separately. A minor issue, easily fixed.
So, the results:
It’s not a speed demon, but it is significantly more responsive. Battery life is similar to the original, so far. I haven’t reloaded all of my apps yet, so we will see how it responds. I am finally able to use the SD card for something useful!
I wish I had an iPhone.
I wish I had an iPhone. I’m definitely not the first to say that, or think it. In fact, I was wishing for an iPhone long before they were announced. Or, I was wishing for a mobile phone that was different from what I had, and different from what was available. It turned out the iPhone fulfills most of what I was looking for.
About a year and a half ago I traded my Palm Tungsten C PDA, and Motorola V600 phone for a T-Mobile Dash smartphone. I had been a long time Palm user, and T-Mobile customer. The Dash was the closest thing I found to replace my two devices with one. Since that switch I’ve had a lot of time to reconsider my choice, and how well it has worked for me. Let me dispense with the suspense: Windows Mobile 6.0 for Smartphones sucks. The Dash hardware has been a resounding “meh”.
The Windows Mobile experience starts with the interminable wait for the phone to boot up. There is no good reason for a phone to take this long from power up to the time it is able function as phone. Mine has the extra bonus of now repeatedly rebooting for a random period of time. I’ve let it reboot itself for over an hour to see if it ever was able to boot. Now, I just keep it on all the time. At night, I put it on the charger and turn off the ringer.
Unfortunately, the fail just keeps on coming after it boots. One of the reasons I choose the Dash was the WiFi capability. When it works, it works okay. Not great, not good, but okay. To turn it on means pressing the ‘Start’ button (modeled after everyone’s favorite Windows feature) and scrolling to find the comm manager application, turning on the WiFi radio. Then ‘Settings’ , ‘Wi-fi’, ‘Wi-fi Networks’, and either pick one that displays or press ‘new’, etc, etc. I don’t like doing that much work to use WiFi on a desktop or laptop, with a decent UI and pointing device. It really sucks to do it on a handheld device with a compromised UI and 4-way controller.
This points out the main flaw with Windows Mobile 6.0 for Smartphones. It is like it’s name, too much button pushing for the benefit. Everything takes too much UI interaction, too much typing on a compromised keyboard, too much scrolling on a compromised screen.
I’ve added a number of 3rd party applications (at considerable cost) to try and make the phone more usable. It has helped, but some of the apps, Pocket Explorer and Pocket Outlook come to mind are just beyond salvage. I’ve been waiting for one of the several Explorer replacements to arive, but none are stable enough to rely on. I’ve tried several replacement mail clients. While some were improvements in basic functioning, they all try to pile on too many other marginal features that get in the way of basic function.
I won’t go into the entire debacle of trying to sync my Dash with my Apple MacBook Pro.
So, why an iPhone? I’ve played with the iPhone several times. I’ve spent time performing the types of operations I (try to) use my Dash for. And, it works. It works well. Apple continues to show us what a good UI looks like, and how it works.
And why haven’t I bought one yet? I’m not ready to pony up the considerable sum for an iPhone, and until AT&T and Apple have a 3G iPhone to offer, I’ll wait.