Android and Me » haykuro

60 Screens From Rogers HTC G1 Android Phone

Taylor Wimberly — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:41:21 +0000

Haykuro, the 17 year old Android whiz, has done it again and released another coveted Android build. This time he has the Rogers HTC G1 a full day before the official release. I decided to flash the build and see what is different. In order to get this out as quick as possible, I decided to upload a bunch of screenshots to Flickr.

Screenshots of Rogers HTC G1 Build
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/35159454@N06/sets/72157619125688230/)

Notable updates include:

Microsoft Exchange Support
PDF Viewer
Quickoffice for MS docs
Full T9 support
and more

I have used the T9 keyboard for some texting and it works perfect. This is the T9 I have been screaming for ever since I first got my G1. Hopefully, this gets ported over to the official T-Mobile Android builds one day. The build also has a mini qwerty keypad as well.

PDF Viewer works with no issues. You can zoom, jump to new pages, and more. Again, this has been added to several of the other custom Android builds.

I tried the Quickoffice app and found it would only open older Microsoft Office files. Any of the newer docx files will not work. Once a file is open, you can only view it.

Looking to flash a custom build? Check out the Android ROM Build Information Database. As always, backup your data and use at your own risk.

If anyone has any special request for the Rogers build, I still have it loaded on my G1. Drop a comment or message me on Twitter @androidandme.

If you want to stay up to date on the latest Android leaks, be sure to follow @haykuro on Twitter.

[Via android-dls.com Thanks Justin]

T-Mobile, JesusFreke, Haykuro, or TheDudes? Android Build Information Chart and Poll

Taylor Wimberly — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:47:49 +0000

Every time we get a new official Android release, the number of custom builds grows. With all the different builds out there, it can be hard to keep up with the changes in each one. Many people have been asking me which is the best release. Normally I tell them to try out several builds and see which they like. I still believe that is the best method to finding a build you are happy with.

If only we had a cheat sheet to show us all the differences…

Thankfully, user SimonNWalker from XDA has posted an extensive list that includes all the current builds available for flashing. Remember when changing builds, you need to perform a wipe is most cases. Read the instructions for each individual build. Backup your data and always have access to a card reader. Browse it over to get a good idea of what build you might like to try next.

Update: Site has moved to http://www.simonwalkerphotos.com/android/android_build_information.asp

While we are on the subject of Android builds, several readers requested this poll and I thought it was a good time with the recent updates. Tell us which build you are running and why. Do you like the extra features included in Haykuros releases or do you prefer a plain vanilla ADP build?

Take Our Poll

Poll link for RSS readers.

What are the differences in each build of Android?

Hold The Sprinkles On My Cupcake, Please: Exploring The Different Flavors of Android

Taylor Wimberly — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:44:22 +0000

Why is T-Mobile holding up the release of their cupcake update? Why would you want to install the cupcake update manually, when you will eventually get it? What are the pros and cons of using a non T-Mobile build of Android? Where is my cupcakes?

In order to better understand this upgrade process, allow us to examine the relationship between HTC, Google, and T-Mobile. HTC is the hardware manufacturer of the G1, Google develops the Android operating system, and T-Mobile sells the device to end users with a service contract. All three companies are members of the Open Handset Alliance which exists to push the Android platform. A similar comparison that is more familiar with many of you would be the way Dell, Microsoft, and Time Warner operate.

Who is really in control?

So what does any of this have to do with Cupcake? Let’s look at the PC side first and see how they operate together. Microsoft develops the Windows operating system and then Dell pays for a license to distribute it on their PCs. Does Dell ship out a plain vanilla version of Windows? No. They take the operating system and then modify it by adding additional software and drivers for their equipment.

Time Warner basically provides no role in the operating system, except that they choose to offer support for it. If you would like, you could take your Dell PC and load a version of Linux onto it, but then Time Warner would not provide you with technical support. They exist in this scenario for one purpose, to provide you internet access.

Now let’s look back at Android and examine the similarities. When Google releases a new version of Android, T-Mobile takes it and adds their own software like MyFaves. At the same time, HTC releases their own images of Android that lack the T-Mobile branding. They do this so that developers can take the latest release and test it to ensure compatibility with their applications. Just like in the PC world, if you do not like the version of the operating system that shipped with your device, you can install an alternative.

The huge difference between these two scenarios is that Microsoft Windows is a closed operating sytem and Android is open source(mostly). Since Android is open source, it is actually encouraged that users take the operating system and modify it to their liking. And that is exactly what has happened. Android enthusiasts like Jesusfreke have taken the Android operating system and modified it to include new features like multitouch, installing apps to your SD card, WiFi tethering, and more.

Pros of an alternate version of Android

The biggest advantage of having an alternate version of Android is freedom. Instead of allowing T-Mobile to dictate how you use your phone, you have the power to choose what apps are installed on your device. Even if you do know how to modify the operating system yourself, there are many versions out there including releases from Jesusfreke, Haykuro, and The Dude. The highlights of an alternate build are:

Full root access to modify the operating system however you see fit
Support for new features like multitouch
More frequent updates vs T-Mobile
Ability to upgrade on your own schedule and not T-Mobile’s
Option to install other Linux distros like Ubuntu

As you can see from the recent cupcake update, the root users had several weeks head start to play with the new Android 1.5. T-Mobile USA has yet to confirm the details of their rollout and it could be weeks before everyone gets it.

Cons of an alternate version of Android

The real power users would tell you there are no cons of an alternate build, but the average person could run into difficulty. And when they run into difficulty, where do they turn? That is the main concern at this point in time.

If you are not running an official T-Mobile version of Android, they are not likely to offer you support when you run into problems. Thankfully, the community of root users grows every day and many people are willing to help. So instead of picking up the phone to dial T-Mobile support, you might ask your question via Twitter or any of the Android forums.

Another concern that has not really been discussed is T-Mobile’s position on the alternate builds. To date, I have seen nothing from them that would indicate they frown upon it. We are in essence like their beta testers and I believe we contribute greatly to the community. If they have accepted us this long, I doubt they will move to disrupt the open source community.

So should I root my phone or leave it alone?

If you are coming to me and asking about rooting your phone, it really depends on your technical knowledge. Each month that passes the upgrade process is simplified, but there are still quite a few hoops to jump through. In the future it might be as simple as 1-click and I would suggest it to more people, but we are not there.

Look in the mirror and ask yourself this question: Am I comfortable loading an operating system on my home PC? If the answer is yes, then by all means go ahead. If you are not really sure, I’d sit on the sidelines a little longer and wait for the process to be refined even further.

If you are still curious about this whole root process, you can browse through our root guide that is a work in progress. I’m not ready to remove the huge warning I placed on it, but you can still browse it over to see what is actually involved.

One cupcake does not satisfy all. We need more choices.

Update: T-Mobile has confirmed the cupcake update for next week and here is a video from Google to make the wait that much more painful.

#AskAndy – Your Android Questions Answered Volume 2

Taylor Wimberly — Sun, 03 May 2009 01:55:33 +0000

Welcome to the second edition of #AskAndy where we aim to answer all your Android related questions. I would like to make this a weekly column, but it will only be successful if you continue to send in your questions. Thank you to everyone who submitted a tweet this week. Again I have chosen 10 questions to answer and we will try to cover the ones we missed in the coming weeks. If your question did not get answered, you can submit it again or leave a comment here for help.

I wanted to give a special thanks to @whoisnick who submitted a good answer to one of the questions. We want to encourage community involvement and will be adding new features to #AskAndy that will make it easier. As this week’s winner, we are sending you a $25 Amazon.com Gift Card. Keep submitting your questions via Twitter because we will be giving out more Amazon.com Gift Cards each week to those who ask and answer questions.

If you would like to participate, you can search the #AskAndy tag on Twitter to see if there are any questions you might be able to answer. We are working on a dedicated Ask Andy section for the site, but in the mean time you can send responses from the contact page or send email to andy (at) androidandme.com

Anyone that submits a response to a question will receive full credit with a link back to your site. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve #AskAndy, leave a comment. Thanks again and keep the questions coming.

1. jakubmach #AskAndy Is possible to launch gambling applications on Android Market?

I believe it depends on what country you live in. I know porn and other adult material is not allowed on the Android Market, but I do not see anything that forbids gambling. Mobile software company Hop-on is releasing several gambling applications for Android. According to their latest press release, they will be releasing gambling apps in Europe “where Gaming is legal, secure and regulated”.

2. nateblackest @androidandme the iphone is well known for its hard to scratch glass screen. How does the g1 compare? I hate most screen skins. #askandy

The invisibleSHIELD offers total protection for you G1.

I carried my G1 in my pocket with a 2nd phone for several months and never scratched the screen. Even thought I never got a scratch, I still purchased a screen protector. Overall, I have zero issues with the screen skin. You can barely even tell it is installed and the touch screen performance has not changed at all. If you are interested in total phone protection, check out our review of the invisibleSHIELD.

3. JaeRobinson @androidandme Why does the Home Screen Hang all the time? Is it because other apps need the resources? #askandy

I have found my home screen to hang when your phone is low on memory. Also, having several of the home replacement apps installed at once slowed down my phone. I had Sweeter Home, Open Home, dxTop, and aHome all installed at once. Users are reporting improved performance with the recent cupcake update. I wiped my phone then installed Android 1.5 on my G1 last night. There was a noticeable difference in the overall performance; especially when returning to the home screen.

I have not seen any benchmarks done, but I would assume that a phone with more free space will perform better than one that is at the limit. It is unfortunate that the G1 has such limited space. Users with hacked phones can install their apps to the SD card, but this feature is not currently supported by the official Android build. If you would like to join the Google discussion of support for installing apps to your SD card, please visit Issue 1151 and leave a comment.

4. j_norton @androidandme #askandy My phone would d/l .zip files out of browser a few weeks ago. Now it says that format is not supported. What gives??

You may have had a file manager installed that was handling the zip files and then removed it. I suggest Linda File Manager for .zip support.

5. kaushikgopal @androidandme #askandy does cupcake allow “dream”ers to read pdf?if you store a file(say pdf)on your SDcard,is there a way of accessing it?

The default version of cupcake does not have PDF support. There are custom Android builds like The Dude’s Cupcake that have this added feature. You can also purchase RepliGo from the Market for PDF support.

6. Aelothir @androidandme Any idea when the update will hit UK G1′s? #askandy

There have been conflicting reports on the cupcake update from T-Mobile. Phandroid.com reported that the update was rolling out and included a photo, but T-Mobile has yet to confirm the update. According to a Twitter update from T-Mobile, “T-Mobile USA will confirm details of Android 1.5 ( #cupcake ) availability for our T-Mobile G1 customers in the near future.” T-Mobile UK also sent out a press release that says the update is coming in May.

Most likely, T-Mobile is slowly sending out the update to allow developers a chance to update their applications. Google has documented the process for making your apps backwards compatible on their blog. For more information on the challenges developers are facing with cupcake, check out Big In Japan’s blog.

7. haydenAndroid @androidandme #askandy Do all Android users access same Market servers? Does it depend on carrier? Can unofficial installs see full market?

The Android Market is filtered according to your device and carrier. For example, T-Mobile customers no longer have access to any of the WiFi tether apps, but they are still available in other countries. The Android Developers Phone is also blocked from downloading protected applications.

One of our readers has informed us that they are working on an app to unlock paid apps for users in other countries. Stay tuned for more details.

8. jimibrown5 @androidandme #askandy Does Android do a keep-alive connection like MS-Push-Mail? and is there a way to limit the data-traffic?

The cupcake update allows you to block background data.

Yes, Android supports push email, contacts, and calendar from Google. If you wish to limit your data usage, you can block it in the new cupcake update. You can also get full Microsoft Exhchange sync with a paid application like Touchdown.

9. j_norton @androidandme what are the weird looking white and black boxes android sites are putting next to their descriptions of market aps? #askandy

Response from reader: whoisnick @j_norton QR Codes. Download the Barcode Scanner app and scan them for a link to the market app or other info. #askandy

See our article for more information on QR codes. We will be using them more and more on this site.

10. Dnukem89 #askandy For The 1.5 Software Update A.K.A. Cupcake, Are The Dev 1 G1s The Only Phones That Will Be Getting The Update??

All G1′s will be receiving the cupcake update. Follow @TMobile_USA on Twitter for an official announcement. If you are impatient, you could root your phone and install the cupcake update on your own. We will be posting a root guide for beginners later tonight if you are interested.

p.s. I will add the QR links later tonight, but I wanted to get this published first. perform a search on Cyrket if you need the QR codes in the mean time.

Let Andy answer all your Android questions. #askandy on Twitter.

50 Screenshots of JesusFreke’s Android 1.5 Cupcake Build

Taylor Wimberly — Sat, 02 May 2009 06:42:52 +0000

The cupcake update for Android has been rolling out over the last few days, but many users have yet to receive it. One of the benefits of installing a custom Android build is the ability to choose when you upgrade. There have been quite a few custom releases based on the cupcake branch including The Dude’s and Haykuro’s, but I have been waiting for Jesusfreke to upload his build.

While checking his blog tonight, I happened to see a post “When is your 1.5 coming out?” which is exactly what I was thinking. To my surprise, the post actually included his latest release. I downloaded it right away and was up and running in minutes. The new features of this custom build according to Jesusfreke:

I’m now including a much better Superuser app, courtesy of zinx

I’ve rebuilt the kernel and enabled netfilter support, to allow tethering. I recommend aNetShare

You can see/download both paid and protected apps in the market

Luke’s multitouch kernel patch and browser patch have been ported to the .27 kernel and 1.5 browser.

Support for the “apps to sdcard” hack. There’s not a separate “apps to sdcard” build. You can use the same build whether you are doing apps to sdcard or not. Thanks to haykuro for explaining how he’s done this in his images, so I can make my builds compatible. See here for a tutorial on setting this up.

I’m not including a recovery image in this build. I ran into some snags getting all of the recovery features to work with the 1.5 recovery image, so I’ll forgo that for now. If you don’t have a spiffy recovery image yet, I’ve packaged up the most recent recovery image from JFv1.43 as a separate update.

I wiped my phone when upgrading so I could have a clean install. The phone feels very snappy with the 1.5 update and has many visual tweaks. Rather than run down everything, this time I decided to snap a bunch of screen shots. There are over 50 screen shots uploaded to our Flick account. I’m working to go back and add descriptions, but if you have a question just post a comment on the photo and I will respond.

If you are interested in learning more about Jesusfreke and his Android builds, he did a short interview with us several months ago. I’m going to see if he will sit down again and answer a few more questions. If you have anything you would like me to ask, post a comment below and I will review it.

Visit our Flickr page for over 50 screenshots.

Cupcake Voice Recognition Now Available for Testing

Alex Byrnes — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:22:12 +0000

Since my last article on voice recognition in Cupcake, two things have happened. The Haykuro images came out and Google released the 1.5 SDK. That means it’s time to test out the voice recognition on a real phone. I’ve compiled some example code that comes with the SDK below. You can install it if you have the Cupcake over-the-air update, the 1.5 ADP, or a Haykuro image.

Voice Recognition for Android 1.5

To install, look for Voice Recognition in the Market (Applications > Demo) or scan the QR code at the bottom of the post. Once it’s installed, you just push the button, speak into your phone and Google’s best guess appears on the screen. Very simple, but some pressing questions have been answered.

It looks like voice recognition will take this form for all applications. The application starts the voice recognizer which prompts the user, displays the volume widget, shows the waveform of the recording, and then returns the results to the application. It’s not perfectly seamless but it gets the job done in a fairly small amount of time.

Note that the processing is not CPU intensive on the phone, but it will need to be sent to Google to be turned into text (thanks to Tim H for pointing this out on the last article). You’ll need a good internet connection for this. I found EDGE (non-3G data connection) to be a bit unreliable. About half got sent back with a connection error. That will definitely vary, but the worst case scenario is not good, especially if you’re trying to use this for possibly frustrating operations like speaking commands to your GPS navigation system. WiFi works much better and the results are fast.

Voice Recognition Results

I like the fact that you get good feedback from the volume widget and the waveform as to how you should be speaking. Since it doesn’t adapt itself to your speaking patterns, you’ll have to accommodate it. Also, if you don’t have an American accent, you might have a tough time getting good results. But, it does work, and Google says it’s getting better with practice. And since Google is one of the few companies on Earth with billions of dollars and access to millions of people’s voice searches, I’d say they’ve got as good a chance as anyone of getting this right.

Internally, the voice recognition interface is pretty simple. Developers will get their choice of models, either free-form or web search based, and they get a list of possible results instead of just one. That allows them to implement their own language model. If three responses come back, the application can choose the one most fitting to its cause.

Suppose the application wants a simple “yes” or “no.” It could accept anything starting with a “Y” as yes and “N” as no. “Yup,” “Yeah,” “You betcha”… as well as “yurt,” “yam”, and “yaw” depending on who’s speaking and how Google interprets it. You’re almost guaranteed a good match. In fact, the smaller the search space, the greater the likelihood of a good match, so a yes/no could be simplified to a silence versus response scheme that would work in any language. (In my tests, “yes” worked pretty well, but “no” consistently came up with “snow.”)

The language model is set to free-form on the sample, so results should differ slightly from the regular voice search.

Good luck! If you have funny, interesting, insightful results, please post them here.

Voice Recognition Demo for Android
Version: 1.0
Developed By: Alex Byrnes
Price: FREE
Filesize: 0.11KB