LWN: Comments on "The Android Dev Phone 1"

I fail to see the point

khim — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:21:55 +0000

With Android you can use your application on locked-down or free phone, with spyware or without, with Palm you are tied to the platform not under your control. Why do this? Do the benefits are so great? Which ones?

The Android Dev Phone 1

thoffman — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:10:50 +0000

There are at least three major differences between using Google's services vs. Microsoft applications, besides the economic cost, which as you correctly point out is not really relevant to real freedom.

1. You can access Google's significant services using entirely Free software and open protocols. That is very different than running an entire proprietary operating system on your own computer, regardless of if its in a VM or not.

2. Unlike Microsoft's major products, there is no attempt at lock-in with Google's products. You can fairly easily download all your email, calendar appointments, and contacts from Google's on line applications, and upload them to a new provider of choice any time you want.

3. Google is very friendly to the Free Software / Open Source community, unlike Microsoft which is essentially at war with it. Google both heavily uses Free software, and also contributes back to the community. This is fundamental, with deep implications for the future of the two companies, and should matter to you, if you are deciding between using products from either Microsoft and Google - even if the Google product is proprietary.

Do you _really_ not see any difference other than the price tag?

G1 great phone, with some issues...

marcmerlin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:00:37 +0000

About battery usage, runtime can vary between about 6 hours to 2 weeks depending on radio and GPS usage.
A few tips I can give you:
1) disable 3G when you don't need it, it sucks a lot more batteries than 2G
2) if you have a huge gmail inbox folder, do not sync it on your phone, that will keep using radios and drain your batteries: set gmail sync days to 0 days so that it syncs on demand or not at all.
3) GPS drains the batteries. Some 3rd party applications leave the GPS on or use it quite a bit. I'd recommend against using those.
4) some other 3rd party apps keep the phone awake and prevent the CPU from going to sleep. This will drain your batteries too
5) Reboot your phone (to reset awake counter), go to settings/about phone/status and scroll to bottom. Leave your phone overnight unplugged from a charger and watch the awake time. I should be in the 5-10% range. If it's not, you have a problem with one or more applications waking up the phone too much or keeping it awake.

Android battery life can be good enough (2 days for me with normal use, including gps/google maps, a few phone calls and occasional note taking), but it's easy for it to go into suck range and hard to see which application is to blame.

Hope this helps,
Marc

Palm Pre

forthy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:00:50 +0000

IMHO, the Palm Pre is a more interesting platform from a free software developer point of view. The reason: Palm has found its old business model back. They sell devices, they build a solid software foundation, other people develop lots of interesting applications for it. Google is not really interested in selling devices, they are interested in data from the consumer (guess what this "Market" program will do with your next Google searches!). In other words: This is at least intended to be spyware.

Well, anyway, it seems that these open Linux smartphones are an idea who's time has come. As with Linux, we see a boatload of different distributions to come, and can expect the one or other flamewar about it. Currently, I count five already: OpenMoko, Android, ALP, WebOS, LiMo, and I probably forgot some here ;-).

G1 great phone, with some issues... (battery)

ktanzer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:15:37 +0000

I guess I use mine too much, because I was lucky to make it through the day without running out of charge (before getting the external power pack). I've read that using 3G rally chews through the battery.

According to this article, Tmobile is going to send out new batteries (for free!), that will either add 20% to capacity, or double capacity. The latter would be most welcome!

http://www.googleandblog.com/g1-battery-replacement-from-...

G1 great phone, with some issues... (battery)

corbet — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:59:52 +0000

FWIW, my (now) more extended experience is that I can get about three days out of the battery. That's with moderate phone use, moderate GPS use, and with wifi and bluetooth turned on. The thing that really seems to kill the battery is anything involving fast video. Messing around on Youtube or playing arcade games draws down the battery quickly.

G1 great phone, with some issues...

tialaramex — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:28:54 +0000

I saw people with both locked and unlocked G1s (I think technically the unlocked phone isn't a G1 but whatever) using an application which deliberately imitates the tricorder, including probably unauthorised use of real Star Trek noises. It mostly does random useless stuff, but a few of the things it measures are based on the sensors in the device, like orientation and position.

The actual battery included in the device is just physically too small to get the job done IMO. I was very surprised when I saw how tiny it was. Obviously there's a lot of electronics packed inside the case, but it seems like they need to find more room to store power, urgently. I'm used to my ancient Nokia, which goes for about a week between charges, and that's on a battery which is now almost ten years old, but it's physically twice as large as the one inside a G1.

G1 great phone, with some issues...

ktanzer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:33:25 +0000

My observations are based on using the locked-down T-Mobile G1 for the last few weeks.

The default battery situation is terrible. The charge will last all day, if you don't use it much as a computer. But then again, that's the point and fun of having this thing. It's OK for your computer to run out of charge, but it stinks that your phone is dead too. The higher capacity batteries probably help some, but the external power pack is the way to go. It holds about 3-phone charges worth of juice, and is pretty small.

Attachment handling. There's a beta PDF reader (that expires), and no MS-Doc viewer. Viewing ability for these documents seems indispensable for a smart phone. Also, you can't attach files to emails (only certain types, like photos). Plus, file uploads are disabled in the web browser (Are uploads and attachments limited on the unlocked Dev?)

The telephone and SMS aren't tied together as neatly as they should be, nor are the emails and contact systems.

You can get a shell, but you don't seem to have permission to do a whole lot. It seems to be real Linux, although I'll defer to those with unlocked root access! It's nice to have a VNC viewer, although for that and the shell I haven't figured out how to generate certain vital keystrokes, like control keys and arrows. A precompiled, easy-to-install VNC server would be a nice thing to have as well.

The GPS is extremely finicky. It often fails to establish a location, or takes a long time to do so.

The camera can be very slow and hard to focus, and there's no zoom or control over it.

There's supposedly a software update coming out very soon ("cupcake") that will add an on-screen keyboard, and generally make things better. Despite my complaints, it's really a cool phone, and I think it will get better over time.

Whether this phone is great or not, it portends well for even better devices to come. I think smart phones will become the realization of the Tricorder from Star Trek....

The Android Dev Phone 1

dlang — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:30:29 +0000

if these people really were in the "we don't care about open source" corner you are saying they belong in, they wouldn't have put things under an open source license that would allow you to fork the code either.

building the defaults to use google but allowing you to fork it to use whatever you want seems like a very reasonable thing to do. most people wouldn't use the fork because they don't have the alternate servers in place to support things (and if you don't trust google with the data, why should you trust any other company?) but those that do can either fork things themselves, or use a fork that someone else has created.

The Android Dev Phone 1

jlokier — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:12:31 +0000

Sure, Google is easier. The question was about what's acceptable, not what's easy or difficult.

The ease-of-use-is-all people can go sit in the "we don't care about open source" corner I guess.

The original article says that you _do_ have to use Google's Gmail if you want sensible functionality from the built in apps. You can use other providers, but things which should work don't work with them. My question still stands: why is that acceptable?

It's good that I can fork it.

In other words, I can turn a Google-requiring phone into an equivalently functional non-Google-requiring phone with some effort.

That is than Microsoft and Windows. But worse than something which works out of the box with other providers of identical online services.

Whether that is a real issue, or just ideology, depends on whether it stays that way, or if Android (the one from Google) interoperates well with other services.

Having to fork isn't an insurmountable barrier for a few individual users wanting to do neat things, but it is rather anticompetitive to service providers, since most users won't use a fork as long as the Google-requiring version is good enough.

The Android Dev Phone 1

Cato — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:22:40 +0000

Firing up a web browser to run a web app is ridiculously easy. Each web app takes little extra resource on the netbook client.

Installing Windows on top of Linux is a lot of work - buy a licensed copy of Windows (£140/$200+ in UK for XP Pro, via eBay sellers only as it's end-of-life), install it, get it activated by Microsoft (which can involve a phone call), install required Windows updates, then install antivirus, antispyware, personal firewall, Firefox, etc, etc. You need at least 1 GB spare to run XP comfortably with multiple apps, or 512 MB for a single main app.

There really isn't any comparison here.

You don't actually have to use the Gmail account required for Android, it seems, and forks of Android are legal. Removing XP product activation is illegal of course.

The Android Dev Phone 1

jlokier — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:53:24 +0000

If Microsoft-only is not acceptable, why is Google-only acceptable?

Sure, you can access Gmail from virtually any computer. But then, you can access Windows from virtually any computer too (just run it in a virtual machine).

They're both proprietary. The only difference I see is the price of Gmail is $0 and the price of Windows is approx $100. But, frankly, if it's just about price you might as well buy a phone which is $100 cheaper.

If I had an Android phone, I'd like to use the calendar and email sync features, but I'd rather do it to another provider of my own choice, probably one which does a few things differently to Google.

Seems Android's software only works properly with Gmail though, and might stay that way.

The Android Dev Phone 1

csamuel — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 07:47:31 +0000

The Australian phone in question is the Kogan Agora, an unlocked Android mobile made by an Australian company with no ties to carriers (they usually make LCD's). I've just ordered their Pro model (AU$399, just over US$280 according to Google) which is due to ship at the end of the month.

According to the specs on their site it will do:

UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)

They claim to do overseas orders too.

The Android Dev Phone 1

salimma — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:37:32 +0000

Some LG phones, if I remember correctly. Also, a lot of Verizon phones have SyncML disabled in the firmware.

The Android Dev Phone 1

job — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:55:54 +0000

What phones has not supported SyncML in the last five years? Granted, it is often a bit tricky to use, but I've never had any problems with basic things such as phone book sync.

Hidden power management, binary blobs?

mjg59 — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:05:27 +0000

Having the gsm hardware running on an entirely separate core is pretty standard - it avoids the need to have a realtime OS on the application side. Normally it ends up being presented as some sort of serial UART that's then controlled using extended AT commands, so there's no real magic needed on the host.

From the power management point of view, the drivers are open, the power management core is open and the application layer that interacts with their power management interface is open. I think it's a pretty dreadful and unscalable solution (suspend sequencing is implemented by devices registering callbacks with priorities, so dependencies need to be explicitly stated rather than being implied by the device tree) and I still don't have any idea what problem it's trying to solve, but they're certainly not hiding anything secret there.

The Android Dev Phone 1

pcfe — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:39:20 +0000

you could also ask your mobile provider for a secondary SIM, some do it (if you're lucky only for a one-time fee to pay for the card). The beauty of this is that both phones are logged into the network, both ring when your main number is rung, both send out the main number when calling or texting, but the new SIM can also be called on it's own number. I find this easier and cheaper than getting an new SIM with a separate number.

Hidden power management, binary blobs?

tajyrink — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:44:17 +0000

Ok interesting, they have a separate ARM CPU for GSM etc. purposes. I wonder if it functions as an external device transparently or if it requires something on the ARM11 side.

Regarding power management, I referred to this Matthew Garrett's quote of the week about Android's power management being done using tokenized dead mice passed through a wormhole, which sounds a bit non-optimal: http://lwn.net/Articles/306531/

The Android Dev Phone 1

bradfitz — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:08:53 +0000

Useful table that somebody else pointed me at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Deployed_UMTS_networ...

And the Dream (G1/ADP1) specs say:

* 3G WCDMA (1700/2100 MHz)
* Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)

Hmm... Why told you these lies?

smoogen — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:30:43 +0000

The un-branded phones are where cell companies lose money on. So they are focused on less and less. The way that they profit is by adding in the various mothership items to sell information about habits to other groups.

Hidden power management, binary blobs?

ajross — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:23:11 +0000

The wifi driver is free, although not in the kernel tree. Source
is available at:

http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/wlan/ti.git;...

Non-free parts of the system that I can remember off-hand are:

+ Everything running on the ARM9 "baseband" CPU (i.e. the radio
side of the world) is a black box. Only the ARM11 core is
exposed.

+ The ATI Imageon OpenGL-ES implementation is proprietary.

+ Access to the DSP cores on the MSM7k chipset is undocumented.
The kernel drivers are free but do nothing but validate command
streams generated by closed userspace libraries (e.g. video
codecs).

+ Many of the Google applications (the ones not distributed with
the SDK) are closed, including the market and maps clients.

Hmm... Why told you these lies?

ikm — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:27:43 +0000

Much further how? What I usually see is just some online stores' apps/links, N-Gage games, stuff like that, and all that looks quite innocent to me. No mother ships, no compulsory account creations, no nothing. Sure some service providers make branded versions with locked-out features, messed up firmware, make people grumpy -- not cool, but I'm talking about the normal, unbranded phones.

Hmm... Why told you these lies?

khim — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:03:57 +0000

Normal companies have the sole interest of selling their phones and that's it.

Sorry, but that's not true today - was not true for many years. Phone is commodity, they can not get good money out of it. Ringtones, Wallpapers and yes, information about your habits (it can be sold to advertisers) make the difference. Symbian-based phone suppliers often go much further then G1 (let alone "The Android Dev Phone 1")...

Hidden power management, binary blobs?

mjg59 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:55:09 +0000

The power management is very visible, but much of it is Android specific.

The Android Dev Phone 1

shahms — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:50:43 +0000

I can understand the arguments against storing all of this data on the Google-provided services. But after having used the phone for a while I can say that it is one of the strongest selling points. Particularly the calendar and contacts. Rather than requiring some Windows-only (or, if they're feeling particularly magnanimous, Mac OS X) software for synchronizing my contacts between the phone and a single computer, I can import them into Gmail from my workstation and they quickly show up on the phone. Linux support out of the box.

With previous phones I had a "choice" of using Windows to get properly sync'd services or having the phone be the sole repository of a good amount of personally important data.

The Android Dev Phone 1

nedrichards — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:21:20 +0000

The G1 supports UMTS/HSDPA etc on 1700 and 2100 MHz. Most of Europe etc. use 2100 in the USA. AT&T uses 850 and 1900MHz and T-Mobile US are using 1700MHz (although I think they have some spectrum in 2100 as well).

The Android Dev Phone 1

ikm — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:11:48 +0000

Normal companies have the sole interest of selling their phones and that's it. By contrast, Google doesn't really have any direct interest in selling phones, as this company's real business is centered around data mining. So while the normal company's interests end after I've bought their phone, with Google, its interests only start there.

Hidden power management, binary blobs?

tajyrink — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:09:56 +0000

I'm indeed interested if this is really competitor to Neo FreeRunner or not. At least I've heard power management is somehow very specially hidden, so is it actually usable after you start taking your freedoms into use by installing eg. Debian (+ maybe FSO etc.)?

Similarly, is WLAN usable by a GPL'd driver or does it require something else besides a firmware to be uploaded, and are there any other binary blobs (GSM?) required for using some features? In FreeRunner, GSM and GPS are just serial modems under /dev, and it's 100% free code running on the CPU.

My guestimate would be that this is not really a competitor to Openmoko freedom-wise, but of course better than simple proprietary and/or vendor-locked phones.

The Android Dev Phone 1

mgross — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:55:28 +0000

for shell access from a linux desktop look to the android SDK and look up the "adb shell" command after you enable Applications/Development/USB debugging setting.

The Android Dev Phone 1

nedrichards — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:59:55 +0000

Well, most Symbian phones are designed to work in the interests of whoever paid the most for them. If you paid for it yourself, then it's Nokia/Samsung etc.; if you bought it on a contract then it's your operator. For example Vodafone and Orange branded N95s infamously had the VoIP stack ripped out of the branded firmware and just like the subsidised G1s (though not this Dev Phone) you can't change to a non branded firmware.

The Android Dev Phone 1

nedrichards — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:56:57 +0000

The current version of k9 mail (the friendly fork of the default IMAP/POP client) has some rudimentary Exchange support. It's a pretty constantly developed (and improving) piece of software.

SSL certs for email

felixfix — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:52:19 +0000

You can use abnormal SSL certs. I have forgotten the exact option, but you have to tell it to "maybe" or "optionally" use certs. It is not at all obvious, but there aren't many options, and then it works.

The Android Dev Phone 1

drag — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:26:12 +0000

Well it's open source so you can change it if you want. The Dev edition, which does no firmware signing and is not restricted to any carrier, can be made to do whatever you want. It's effectively a new operating system that uses a Linux kernel.. it's just not posix.

Find all the mentions of IP addresses or 'google.com' and point them to something else if your paranoid about it.

As far as the Symbian phone goes all you can do is take their word for it that it's not going to be used to spy on you in any manner.

The Android Dev Phone 1

ikm — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:57:25 +0000

I really don't like the idea of Google storing all my personal information, analyzing it, peeking at it, handling it away arbitrarily according to its whims, keeping it for an indefinite amount of time, and even disallowing to erase it. Since it's this what this phone is really about, I'd rather get a (still currently non-free) Symbian phone which, despite having non-free firmware, still is designed to be owned by me rather than by some friendly Mom's corporation. Google rightly separates information from everything else, and it's that what it wants to have, not some source codes. Probably not by a coincidence, it's what I want to keep to myself as well.

The Android Dev Phone 1

teferi — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:41:40 +0000

It only does 3G on the 2100MHz band, which T-Mobile uses. AT&T (are there any other GSM
carriers left in .us?) uses the 1900MHz band, so if you're in .us, T-Mobile is your only choice if you
want 3G on the Dev Phone or G1.

The Android Dev Phone 1

drag — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:58:40 +0000

Hopefully more unlocked phones will start coming into the market. The cool thing about this 'developer' version is that there is no checksum check built into the bootloader. With T-mobile subsidized phones your stuck using signed firmware images.....

Most of the Google oriented services can probably be replaced by other applications; I expect. Having a IMAP email client would be wonderful.. maybe something that can take a Exchange plugin from the OpenChange folks would make these phones a much more attractive item for business types.

Who knows. Android may be the first introduction to running a open source operating system that many people will run into.

Also you should be able to run Debian on one of these things, as well as run Android on the OpenMoko phone or the Nokia n810. Koolu, a Freerunner reseller, has a beta Android version that you can run on those phones.

Then there is a company in Australia that has a Android phone out on the market, which may be interesting.

-------------------------

Personally I am going to wait a bit. I just bought a Sony Ericson phone and in a couple months I'll probably be in the market for a smart phone to hack around with. This way I can use my SIM card from my current phone in my 'hacking' phone and thus have a escape route if I end up bricking something or don't have things working quite right.

The Android Dev Phone 1

pr1268 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:34:39 +0000

I'm curious: if the phone supports quad-band GSM, but 3G only on select networks, then which providers (in the USA) would the 3G features work? Should I assume that T-Mobile is one of these?

Thanks, Jon, for the review. I look forward to saving up for one (assuming they're available for joe blows like myself—I got lost online [or just too lazy to click further] looking for how to purchase one).