HTC Incredible

Do not bother with the HTC Incredible. It has way too many restrictions, does not even have a physical keyboard, and will not allow the installation of Swype. It makes typing frustrating and cumbersome.

Droid 2

The Droid 2 from verizon which will be sold under the international name of Droid Pro, is slightly faster than the Droid, but comes with significantly more bloatware. It does come prepackaged with the Swype keyboard, which makes on screen typing vastly easier, but all told, if you must buy a phone at a retail price, the Droid 2 is not worth it. The origainal Droid can be made to have all the same functionality with nearly the same performance. Buy a used or refurbished Droid 1 on eBay instead of a Droid 2.

Root

Recently we upgraded our Verizon Motorola Droid to the Android 2.2 Froyo OS (upgrade available). Froyo is almost entirely a win. It runs everything much faster, and includes plenty of upgrades all around although some apps are not yet fully debugged for the new OS. However, in their infinite inanity, Verizon locked down the Droid's tethering ability with the new OS, and any attempts lead one to a page for a new plan upgrade they can purchase to enable previously free tethering. This is a brilliant way to alienate loyal customers. Fortunately, there is an app for that. EasyRoot safely roots the Droid phones for $1. Rooting, is giving the user and with user permission other applications, superuser complete control over their Linux phone. Once rooted, many other free applications allow users to take full advantage of their phone's potential including effective use of the terminal, phone-wide ad-blocking, and fixing USB tethering, and turning the phone into a wifi hotspot. EasyRoot has been blocked from the Android Market owing to Verizon's cozy relationship with Google, however it is still available for manual install. EasyRoot even has unroot capability in case you have to take your phone in for service.

*Update* - We also managed to root the Droid 2 using the following procedures: link.

Remote Desktop and Android

Power users of M$ Windows know well the usefulness and neatness of Remote Desktop. XtraLogic has an RDP Client for Android which works brilliantly; we have tested it. Check out the video on the site. On the Motorolla Droid, connecting through the built in PPTP VPN it does not work as well, but we have noticed many problems with this VPN functionality on Android. Unfortunately this means you might be stuck having to open up RDP connectivity to the internet which is a very clear security risk. Be productive, but be careful.

Verizon Skype

Yesterday Verizon started a new promotion to allow free Skype-to-Skype calling on its Smartphones, sending and receiving. On Android, this is possible with the new and improved Skype Mobile App. Verizon actually enables this through its voice network rather than over the datafeed, allowing good integration with Bluetooth devices and much higher fidelity of communication. Skype is a closed source, proprietary P2P voice protocol and unless that changes, it is probably a dead-end company. However, with sponsorship and special privilege from large telecoms, Skype perhaps has a new lease on life against the coming existential threat from the refactoring of Gizmo5 with Google Voice. In conclusion, if you have a Verizon smartphone or communicate regularly with someone who has a Verizon smartphone, consider using Skype.

Recommended Android Applications

Google Voice,Nestoid,Listen,Advanced Task Killer,PDANet,Nestoid,DroidLight,i Music,ApkInstaller,AK Notepad.

Guava is good if you have a Gizmo5 Account, but it interferes with the Google Voice Ap. It is good to have available but uninstalled if you get in a bind and have used all your 'Anytime' minutes.

We are looking forward to Fennec.

Swype Keyboard works quite well.

Off The Record

Pidgin, Trillian and Adium are great IM softwares. Off The Record is a plugin for those programmes which enables encrypted communications with Perfect Forward Secrecy using standard clients such as Google Talk, ICQ, AIM etc.

Trillian now has an iPhone version. It is very important that an OTR application, or similar technology, is developed for mobile platforms like iPhone and Android so that people might have secure mobile communication.

*UPDATE: It recently came to our attention that Pidgin Saved Passwords are saved in plain text in an obvious location. Thus, anyone gaining access to the user's filesystem can obtain all their IM passwords, including their Google Account if they use it for Google Talk. This is a major security vulnerability. Be aware!

Droid - Acquired

We have acquired a Verizon Motorola Droid. Verizon is known to have the best network as far as coverage and Voice service in the United States. Compared to what we have witnessed for Sprint and ATT, this is quite believable.

Droid runs on Android 2.0, the soon the be Open Sourced OS sponsored by Google. Google Voice is integrated seemlessly, and the Gizmo5 Guava ap allows VoIP through a WiFi connextion (although it is currently a bit buggy). For us as Java programmers, it is an ideal match. The OS is very slick and functional and quite competitive with the iPhone. Furthermore the Droid has a built in Keyboard in addition to an on-screen keyboard, thus giving it a bit more utility than the iPhone.

Droid is capable of USB Tethering through the PDANet software. At first we had trouble establishing a normal PPTP VPN through this tether, but OpenVPN seems to work with no problems, thus solving our practical problem.

Up until the Droid, the iPhone was clearly the best phone available, but finally a competitive product has arrived that does not need to be jail-broken by default.

Once we get the Spotify Mobile Ap working, then all your base are belong to us.

We are at last upgrading to the Droid from a seven year old Samsung N400. Good Riddance.

Droid

Motorolla has finally released Droid. The company tries to rape its customers with the Data Plan Tethering $30/month option, but luckily a $30 One time programme delivers the same functionality to the user. PDANet. Overall, Droid looks like solid hardware and quite hackable. We plan to start a demo this week. PDANet also works for jailbroken iPhones.

Palm Post

Our trial of the Palm Pre is concluded. With tethering enabled, the Pre is adequate, but despite being a Linux phone, there are simply no applications for it to realise its potential, and a 2 year lock in to Sprint is a tough pill to swallow - not to mention the $350 price tag for the Pre.

We are holding out for an Android phone hopefully on Verizon later this year. The greater support, adoption, flexibility and programmability of Android we hope will make it worth the wait.

Palm Pre

We are currently demoing a Palm Pre. Today we succeeded in "rooting" it (gaining Unix administrator control) and enabling it into a wifi router. It is still a hack, and not completely reliable and usable, but good enough to get the job done. (In the course of writing this post, the connection dropped, and we chose to switch to a more reliable connection.) The connection seems unrestricted by port and protocol so that VPN, Remote Desktop, Bit Torrent etc all seems to work on it. With Palm Pre which in USA is on the Sprint network, speed seems to be 1 Mb/s down, 0.15 Mb/s up.

Here are the directions to enable the WiFi router most easily. With root access, one can change many settings with a bit of determination.

The Pre itself is adequate as a phone and web browser. We are still not sure if we will keep it or abort it, as Bruno would say. Sprint allows 30 days to return it. Waiting for a proper Android on a proper network or submitting to the tyranny of Apple ATT are the only other options to remain a functional mobile Internaut. All choices require a 2 year lock in.

Update: Given new moves to block tethering, ATT/IPhone is a completely nonviable option.