Android Convert

Thanks to Will, I’ve now got an Android phone. The HTC Dream/Android Developer Phone 1 to be exact.

I’ve had my HTC p3600i for almost two years now; I wrote that review not long after I bought the device, and it wasn’t long after it that the flaws started to show. As I did mention, browsing was useless with PocketIE, but over time the device just became less and less stable. In the last two or three months, the phone has insisted that its roaming unless I reboot it – then it’ll work for about 15-20minutes.

The developer experience for Windows Mobile 6.0 (and presumably 6.1 & 6.5) was also a nightmare. I once started looking at creating a Twitter client for it, and I discovered that to get TextWrapping on a TextBox (under .NET CF), you had to override the Draw method of the Textbox. Already I’ve created more for Android than I did for Windows Mobile, and it’s still at the proof of concept stage! (More on that in a later post)

I’m really enjoying the relative responsiveness of the Dream/Android, as well as much nicer UI. Having a physical keyboard again is awesome, I don’t think I could go back to an all touchscreen phone. A usable browser is also a nice change – I can finally do net banking on my phone, should I need to.

That’s not to say Android or the Dream are flawless.

• Battery life sucks,
   
• I’ve had more than a fair share of various parts of Android (such as the Home screen) lock up,
   
• Android 1.6 has no Exchange support (although this is in 2/2.1, it’ll be awhile – if ever – before the Dream gets the upgrade because of the relatively small partition for the OS not enough RAM – thanks for the clarification Bck),
   
• Many applications (including the “Google Experience” apps) default to notifications/always running/syncing requiring disabling the settings.Gmail, despite turned off under Settings –> Data Synchronisation –> Auto-sync (and Auto-sync turned off completely) always seems to sync as soon as Background Data is enabled, so I have to leave that off, which then disables the Market!Disabling Background Data warns/informs that disabling it will save power and data, but some applications require it and still use the connection!
   
• While the UI is pretty good, a lot of it is incredibly unintuitive. Some of the submenus in Settings have additional menu (activated by pressing the Menu button), but there is no visual indicator nor do all of the submenus respond to it.