so much fuss about about a typo ? huh - there is no mention of motorola in this thread so it should be quite obvious - but whatever floats your boat

Simply put: say what you mean, mean what you say. To be a civilized human and not a grunting Neanderthal, you need to convey your intentions and not just settle with the sloppy excuse of "you know what I mean", because "you know what I mean" is often not the case. Typos are understandable, but you claimed it wasn't a typo--you effectively blamed it on your generation of "texting' as a habit. That's the problem.

The point to clarifying the mistake in your message was to indicate that there is no Droid model from Samsung--although it does run the Android operating system. For that matter, Motorola isn't the only hardware manufacturer that has a device named a "Droid" by Verizon. (i.e. the HTC Droid Incredible).

I'm not sure why you feel the need to be so defensive about your confusing mistake. Admit it was a mistake and simply move on.

Getting back onto the primary topic at hand, I'm interested to find out what comes on telephone handsets after Android 2.3 comes out. I kept hearing about a 2.5 eventually coming out. Anybody see any details about that yet?

It seems as if Android is going to try to avoid splitting the OS between smartphone and larger displays. I think this is a wise choice, but the implementation of the UI specifically will be crucial.

As I understand it, they're using 'fragments' that are basically UI elements that can be automatically repositioned based upon the screen dimensions and resolution. So for example on a tablet, these fragments would be side-by-side ala a pane display, though on a phone, the same unmodified app would display with a fragment on multiple screens (think slide left)

This is simple, but very smart. Take a look at most larger format apps on traditional desktops, and you'll see that they are basically multi-pane layouts. This provides very functional backward compatibility for smaller devices.

It's a strategy where I can see pros and cons, but mostly pros. This will significantly widen the reach of developers that use good design principals and platform agnostic code, and eliminate the need to maintain multiple versions of an app.

The con is that it somewhat limits Android apps to lower power devices, but I actually think this con is a pro in disguise. Most apps can be light enough to work well on a phone if programmed correctly. I think that fast processors and wide buses, and loads of RAM have made developers somewhat lazy. Lower power devices force programmers to optimize more aggressively.

Here's a peak at the next Android UI (as seen in the latest IO keynote):

http://www.droiddog.com/android-blog...player-leaked/

This is for the upcoming Android music player that looks amazingly full featured. I like some of the graphical features of the UI. I'm not mad on the actual style, but some of these elements (eg. parallax scrolling, GPU acceleration) look very nice and would be great if skillfully used.

Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glFiw1ex7oY

Now this is good news: It would appear that VLC is on it's way to Android!

http://www.androidcentral.com/vlc-me...oid-early-2011

For Tab users, this likely means less as the platform has great codec file format support. But in general it's a great OSS software that will increase media support across devices and provide a long-term solution beyond proprietary software.

Look for it in early 2011.

Woah! Bestbuy has a sale for the Bell Canada Tab at $549!


http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/...6320f27324en02

The price won't get any lower than this. I'm going to do some calculations, but it looks like it may be time to take the plunge.

The downer is that they don't have any in-stock, so I'll have to wait until the 7th and then pick it up in the store. It could be worse, I suppose, but it would be far nicer if I were walking away with one in hand.

I wasn't impressed at all. It looks like the same old player in every way except that they replaced the album/song/artist list with a Gallery app style interface. Meh. You're still better off installing WinAMP on your Android to get a full featured music player.

Pretty decent overview....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3pbWIa8xZc

I concur about his browser experience, and it's why I HIGHLY recommend immediately installing (and making your default) the Dolphin browser (not the HD version).

What do you think about the UI styling?

I love the smoothness and the parallax, but the style seems a little muddled and not elegant. Of course this is just a nitpick. In the end such things matter little to me and functionality wins over my heart -- heh, just like with women.

For the gallery interface: it would be far nicer if the tiles tilted based on the speed of the scroll. Again, a nitpick, nothing serious.
eg. http://www.dmxzone.com/demo/wall3d/index.html

Back to the styling: I think the list items need better spacing, typefaces and placement of in-list icons. Also the transition effects on the rotate and the sideways-pan-to-next-screen could be far nicer. In the end, tiny tweaks by a seasoned graphic designer could make all the difference in the world and truly make this a first class interface.

Well, it's better. It's not function over form, though. I don't see anything in there that makes it work better than the old interface, it just looks better. This is why I suggested WinAMP, where the interface is pretty bland but function handily wins out over form and it works far better.