My impressions of Android

About 4 weeks ago I purchased a Motorola Droid as my personal device and I figured I would share some of the pros and cons. Keep in mind I have been playing with a lot of the latest and greatest devices in order to test Fennec, so I have some comparisons I can make.

Overall: a big win.

Store/Market: There are a lot of apps easily available for Android and the interface is easy to use. I found that getting apps for Windows Mobile was difficult (I was really trying to do that for a test case) and gave up. On Maemo (n900) there are a few apps in Ovi which are easy to install and use. Overall, I find Ovi to be sluggish and lacking apps that I searched for.

Calling: This has been very easy. I would say all three platforms are easy to call with. n900 gets a big win for SIP calling!

Typing: The Droid has a hard keyboard which really sucks. I love the n900 hard keyboard. Much to my surprise the virtual keyboard is easy to use. I have never been able to use a virtual keyboard due to the high error rate (bad eye sight for me). I found that putting the phone in landscape mode gives me much larger keys and I have 90% accuracy. One other bonus here is the dictionary uses words from my content (email, contacts) so I don’t have to type long names out. Note to Google and UI designers: if you take up the whole screen for a form fill UI, please let me know what element I am filling in!!!

Maps/Navigation: I find this to be top quality. The maps are pretty standard (you can get google maps for winmo phones), but the integration to make this work like a handheld GPS is awesome. Turn by turn directions and it is easy to use even while driving. Another ++ here is you can click on an address in the web browser and it takes you to the map (again for directions if you want)

Voice Search: probably the coolest feature yet. I have found this to be 98% accurate (at least for my voice and accent). When I see something, I just push the mic button on my search bar, say it (even with a lot of background noise) and I have results.

Email/Social networking: I like the built in gmail support, that is easy to use. The facebook app sucks and I prefer to use a web browser. Sharing pictures is easy, but rotating them needs some love.

Camera: Not as cool as the n900, but better than the Omnia 2. Pretty usable, but watch out for the ~3 second delay from taking the picture to seeing it. The gallery is easy to find your pictures and apps can access them with ease.

Hardware: It doesn’t weigh much (not as light as the Omnia 2) and isn’t too clunky despite my first impressions. I like the hard buttons on the touch screen, but I accidentally hit them all the time and end up doing crap I didn’t intend. Also it seems that shaking the device does random things, so don’t go running with it!

I am looking forward to running Firefox as my default browser. I fully expect the click to call and click to map functionality integration!

Stair climbing as a sport

This post deviates from my slew of Mozilla automation related posts, but feel free to read along. After moving to a high rise condo building a year ago I started taking the stairs (to the 39th floor) instead of the elevator a few times per week. As time went on this became enjoyable and I could make it to the top without falling on the floor with shaky legs, gasping for air and on the verge of needing life support (just ask my wife about my earlier climbs.)

Time to step it up (pardon the pun). I became involved in some of the online groups, and noticed a lot of other people getting into the sport. It seems like the last couple years has seen an explosion of participants, elite competitors (ones who actually run up the stairs), and events in cities all over the world. Earlier this month I took the plunge and signed up for my first race. This is small in comparison to the Sears tower or the CN tower, but you have to start somewhere.

Wish me luck in 4 weeks and consider climbing up the stairs next time you are waiting for the elevator, it really is fun.

Happy PI Day

Just a quick post to wish everybody a happy PI day. If you want to celebrate, I suggest buying t-shirt with PI on it, eating some form of pie or better yet calculating or reciting digits of PI.