Apr

25

G1 Assault on battery

15 years ago, at the end of April | Leave a Comment

I know I’m late to the party but a few days ago I received a small package containing a T-Mobile G1 phone running Android. The first thing I did was go to unlock-now to get myself a SIM unlock code. After submitting my details and paying up the 17.50 EUR it was just a case of waiting for the email, about 3 hours in my case. The email details G1everything you need to know when unlocking, particularly useful is the info on setting up a new APN which you’ll need to do if you aren’t using T-Mobile as your carrier. My O2 PAYG SIM from my iPhone worked fine and soon the G1 was syncing happily with gmail. One of the things that struck me about the G1 was all the negative comment on it’s size and feel that I’d read in various blogs and reviews. Personally I couldn’t see and issue with either the thickness of the device or the the look and feel of it and I wasn’t alone in that. I really don’t see what all the ‘complaints’ were about.

One of the things I had heard though, that I can confirm, is the poor battery life. Without installing any extra software the only real control over the G1’s power management seems limited to turning off the GPS or WiFi. However, there is a ray of light. After installing Power Manager things improved immensely but it still wasn’t enough. The solution I settled on was to buy an extended, 2400mAh, battery which came with a replacement back. The battery is physically 2 or 3 times the thickness of the original, which is why you get a replacement and the end result is a device that’s about as thick as a NOKIA N95.

So why didn’t I wait for a G2? Simple really. The G1 has a wonderful physical keyboard. I really can’t stand on screen keyboards, perhaps I’m a minority.

Of course the other reason that I wont be getting a G2 is that Vodafone are capping both daily and monthly usage when you sign up – 15mb / day and 500mb a month. Perhaps everyone at Vodafone still uses a 6310? Maybe they just don’t like the G2 or Android. Who knows?

Update (Sunday 10th May) : G1 Running cupcake has been running for 3 days with the extended battery and no charging!



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April 25, 2009 22:27

Jul

24

More invisible source code

16 years ago, at the end of July | Leave a Comment

Yet another application claims to be open source without actually publishing any source code. While the WordPress folks have a pretty good record when it comes to making source code available it does not excuse this sort of thing. It’s rather simple. You can’t actually claim anything to be open source until you actually release the source. It annoys the bajeebers out of me when I see people use the ‘open source’ as a marketing ploy.
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July 24, 2008 7:27

Nov

10

There is no spoon

17 years ago, mid-November | Leave a Comment

It’s true. There is no GooglePhone. What we are going to get is an SDK, Android, which will hopefully allow us to build quickly and simply. Sadly the licensing still allows devices to be locked down tight, so don’t expect to see a flood of Opensource devices hitting the streets any time soon.

Since the SDK isn’t due to be available until the 12th November 2007, I’ll hold back for now. Once I have my paws on it I’ll let you know what I think. As it stands I don’t see it as any sort of challenge to Openmoko, in fact I think it adds strength to it.



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November 10, 2007 17:10

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