The Epic Android Thread - Page 181 - maemo.org

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	danramos	2011-01-07 , 22:38
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#1801

At this rate, why would you need a desktop/laptop computer anymore? Especially if they start doing things like making them work with keyboards, mice, printers, and other peripherals in addition to the touchscreen, velocity sensors, magnetometers, etc.

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	danramos	2011-01-07 , 22:56
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#1802

Originally Posted by Capt'n Corrupt

Here's an extensive preview of Honeycomb done by a head googler:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqn9ikoQf_U
http://www.droiddog.com/android-blog...rizon-presser/

What do you think?

I think it looks 'ok', here's why:

The UI styling is novel, but feels cold and needlessly busy. This is a minor gripe, I'm sure, but it seems to lack that soft-touch that makes a good thing great. For example, I like the 3D desktop transitions, but hate the borders. It would also be nicer if the effect was more pronounced. I also like the bottom bar, but the button designs, size, and placement is poor at best. Again, a small tweak that could have made a large difference. The transition between applications also feels very on-off. It would be nice if there was a slide transition rather than simply flashing a different application on the screen (eg. when the gmail app called maps).

I love some of the new apps. The Gmail app looks great and extremely useful. I really like the youtube application. It shows the 3D wall, and I'm hoping that OpenGL was used in its construction, which would imply fluid graphics and good battery usage, especially for the 1280x800 screen in the demo. One thing I don't like about the youtube app is that it loads video images only when they are on the screen. It would have been far nicer if the app loaded many images in advance to avoid the 'empty-frame' effect. Other than that it looks really nice.

Google talk looks amazing! The video framerate is superb and performance you would fully expect on a desktop. With Google Talk and a Google tablet, the idea of usable web-communication comes closer to reality rather than needing a contact list to share device brands or share software. Perhaps 2011 will be the year that Video calls become ubiquitous.

I *still* prefer the multi-tasking scheme that Android uses rather than the
'implied' multi-tasking schema used by the playbook or more traditional desktops. The benefit is that you don't have to 'close' applications, which is an innovation that palmOS introduced in the mid-90s brought and that I absolutely love. The playbook's demo seems to have wowed the crowd by running quake and a 1080p video, but this use-case can only result in battery drain, and making it necessary for the user to regulate this (app management) making it more complicated to use than an Android system.

In the end, my main gripes are with the UI styling not the capability. It's an OS after all, and android is certainly capable enough for any modern task. Thankfully, Android is theme-able and I bet that 3.0 should be as well. As it stands, the look is very vanilla and rough around the edges (IMHO).

I'm still betting that GPU acceleration is missing across the entire UI. There were earmarks of this lack across the demo. Ugh..

I was a little boggled by the GMail demo linking to Google Maps. That part of the demo is IDENTICAL to the way GMail and Maps work right now. I can tap in the body of an email and, depending on the context, my Android device will launch maps, the phone dialer, etc. depending on whether it "sees" an address, phone number, etc. and Google Maps 5 is already out here.

Overall, most of it seemed like mostly small but important changes that could probably be done pretty well even on current devices. I'll bet Honeycomb gets backported to the older devices one way or another. I've already heard rumor that it'll be supported (although not shipped) on some of these newest phones.

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	danramos	2011-01-07 , 23:30
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#1803

Hahah! Someone tagged the thread, 'android blows'. Someone feels threatened.

Poor guy. Last time I looked, the N900 didn't sell very well while the Tab sold pretty darn well and continues to keep selling well, so I can understand why someone on a Maemo forum might feel threatened by this particular thread in the competitors section of the forum, but I'd have to disagree that it blows if the fact is that you have to feel so threatened.

This also dismisses the 'gtab is doa' tag, clearly it wasn't.

Although the one tag I'm interested in an answer for is 'when maemotab?' I would really like to know when Maemo/MeeGo will finally release on a good, supported tablet or at the very least manage to find itself installed on one of these Galaxy Tabs or something.

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	Capt'n Corrupt	2011-01-08 , 00:33
	Posts: 3,524 \| Thanked: 2,958 times \| Joined on Oct 2007 @ Delta Quadrant	#1804

Originally Posted by danramos

I was a little boggled by the GMail demo linking to Google Maps. That part of the demo is IDENTICAL to the way GMail and Maps work right now. I can tap in the body of an email and, depending on the context, my Android device will launch maps, the phone dialer, etc. depending on whether it "sees" an address, phone number, etc. and Google Maps 5 is already out here.

Overall, most of it seemed like mostly small but important changes that could probably be done pretty well even on current devices. I'll bet Honeycomb gets backported to the older devices one way or another. I've already heard rumor that it'll be supported (although not shipped) on some of these newest phones.

Andy Rubin made special note that Honeycomb implemented 'fragments' which display multiple panes on larger displays, and multiple-views (with a side-swipe) on smaller devices. This almost certainly implies that Honeycomb is built to be compatible with phones or devices with smaller screens.

This is a very interesting strategy.

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	Capt'n Corrupt	2011-01-08 , 00:45
	Posts: 3,524 \| Thanked: 2,958 times \| Joined on Oct 2007 @ Delta Quadrant	#1805

Originally Posted by danramos

I was a little boggled by the GMail demo linking to Google Maps. That part of the demo is IDENTICAL to the way GMail and Maps work right now. I can tap in the body of an email and, depending on the context, my Android device will launch maps, the phone dialer, etc. depending on whether it "sees" an address, phone number, etc. and Google Maps 5 is already out here.

I agree. I think they're leveraging that fact that most new users don't have much exposure to Maps 5, which is a very cool selling feature. It's a pure marketing move, and one that's well played; it's best to put your best foot forward.

But I agree. There's nothing really shown that couldn't be rather easily implemented on top of froyo -- though I understand that 'easy' solutions are sometimes very hard to get to.

I'm most interested in crawling through the API to see what is new under the hood. I'm starting to wonder how much is different between Gingerbread and Honeycomb, as the releases are so close to one another. As it turns out, I think the first Honeycomb tablet is set to ship in February!

I also recall google talking about maintaining v2.x for low cost smartphones. But there's nothing to suggest that Honeycomb couldn't run well on smaller devices.

Seems strange either way. It will be interesting to learn more about the strategy.

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	Capt'n Corrupt	2011-01-09 , 13:33
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Here's the tablet version of Opera for Android:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnDPNspmMY4

I *love* the interface. It's clean, sleek, and well designed. I would prefer if the address bar and the search bar were combined, but otherwise the design is great.

The problem is that it seems not to use GPU acceleration! The scrolling/zooming speed is MUCH slower than that 'phone' version on the same device. In fact it looks as though it's using the same HTML view that is a part of the Android API.

It seems odd that Opera would be working on two independent codebases for this product. At most, it would seem that the Tab version of the software would be a rather minor tweak of the phone version. This appears not to be the case, however, as the rendering engine is certainly looking somewhat rough around the edges pointing poor software engineering decisions for application design, or a rushed 'mockup' of a product.

What are these companies doing?!

I'm overall disappointed by the showing, but quite optimistic that the final will be solid.

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	Capt'n Corrupt	2011-01-09 , 13:35
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Here's a neat video showing a Tab controlling the ARDrone quad-copter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cjNwxqp9EY

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	debernardis	2011-01-09 , 13:50
	Posts: 2,142 \| Thanked: 2,054 times \| Joined on Dec 2006 @ Sicily	#1808

Maybe everybody already knows that... I didn't.
When you stick a micro sd card into the Tab it starts making its own thing to it, creating dirs and so on. Maybe every android device does like that. Anyway, I inserted in the Tab the micro sd card of my daughter's nintendo dsi, with the result that it was not readable any more by her device.
I spent a lot of time looking for the firmware and restoring it (thenks n900! thanks, host mode gurus!).
So, don't use the Tab's micro sd receptacle for cards you have to use elsewhere.

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	Capt'n Corrupt	2011-01-09 , 13:53
	Posts: 3,524 \| Thanked: 2,958 times \| Joined on Oct 2007 @ Delta Quadrant	#1809

Originally Posted by debernardis

Maybe everybody already knows that... I didn't.
When you stick a micro sd card into the Tab it starts making its own thing to it, creating dirs and so on. Maybe every android device does like that. Anyway, I inserted in the Tab the micro sd card of my daughter's nintendo dsi, with the result that it was not readable any more by her device.
I spent a lot of time looking for the firmware and restoring it (thenks n900! thanks, host mode gurus!).
So, don't use the Tab's micro sd receptacle for cards you have to use elsewhere.

Wow, this is a pretty big deal. It would seem that the MicroSD is appropriated solely as an expansion slot rather than a card reader.

Thanks for the update. This is a pretty serious point of interest.

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etuoyo	2011-01-09 , 14:24
Posts: 1,179 \| Thanked: 770 times \| Joined on Nov 2009	#1810

In case anyone is trying to share their N900 with the Tab I posted a how to here which should work on all android devices presumably but of course I only have a Tab to test it with.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...766#post913766

Now I can take advantage of my unlimited mobile web access without having to put my sim card into the Tab which makes receiving calls a bit more complicated.