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Hero Reborn: Eris Leak, Birth of a Legend

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

OK, the title is s a bit over the top, still topical, but I just thought I’d squeeze as many relevant Android-isms in there as I could (Hero, Eris and Legend)

Almost straight after my last Android post regarding my disappointment in HTC’s delay in their release of the promised Android 2.x release for the Hero (or Dream/G1, Magic/Sapphire, etc).  Thanks to a leaked build for the HTC Eris, dropped by a sketchy HTC staff member (or perhaps a creative community-driven beta testing process), a torrent of new custom Hero ROM’s were released.  Like always, each is slightly different with software/apps included or removed, and installed special optimisations, bug fixes and kernel hacks.

Since the 2nd of March:

Anyone who’s been around the Hero/Android scene would probably have seen many of these names, and choice always keeps things interesting, but as you can see from the brief descriptions above, apart from different bootscreen/design/installed apps the optimisations in each are almost the same.

Unfortunately the issue is, I believe, while we don’t have access to the complete driver set or an updated (Android 2.x friendly) kernel, true creativity and customisation of each individual ROM isn’t particularly easy, at least from this posters point of view.

Flash forward to tonight (9th March) and a new dump has been leaked, this time for the HTC Legend (newer phone with almost exactly the same hardware specification as the Hero, except for that sweet AMOLED screen), which appears to have even more of the new Eclair features missing from the previous build, as well as more bug fixes I’d imagine!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Android, Eclair (2.0), Hero, Tech | Comments

Still waiting for Eclair

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Yo may remember my previous post about my the wide range of custom ROM’s available for the HTC Hero, whose makers were instrumental in enabling the humble Hero-sian a taste of one of the finer treats in the Android Patisserie, eclair. (They should definitely name a future release cheesecake, that would, err, put the icing on the cake?)


Nom, nom, nom..

Months on, however, HTC have still not released an office 2.1/Eclair update for the Hero platform, nor have they provided (i.e let slip) an updated 2.1 dump for the cooks to play with.  No doubt this is because of the release of the Nexus, Legend and Bravo, so as not to steal their thunder, but I’m betting it’s because they just don’t care.  And why should they?  In this day and age of Lacoste, Guiness and Apple fanboy-ism, brand loyalty means nothing….. right?

But who am I to complain right? I’ve heard the tired old argument about manufacturers releasing devices to the market with a whole lot of push and marketing to get buyers, then stopping support/upgrade path for them soon after release.  Many do it, look at Samsung (the Galaxy fizzled and died as soon as hit the shelf), and from what I’ve seen support from Acer for the Liquid has been no better.  But after all, HTC is no different to any other company, they exist for the money and I guess we shouldn’t expect more.


She’s “cool”, Apple win.. HTC, on the other hand.. don’t.

This will most certainly be my last £0/fee per month contract phone though.  I love it, but 18 months with one device is just too long.  In the future, I’ll foot the ~£500 price tag for a new phone and sell it six months later for £300 repeating the process over again.

Ashamedly, I realise that my lust for new hardware and device happiness has the equal effect of giving the manufacturer exactly what they want, and keeping them happy… many times over.

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Posted in Android, Apple, Eclair (2.0), Hero | Comments

Android – The Perfect Setup

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

I’ve had my HTC Hero just over 6 months now, and for all accounts I’m perfectly happy with it, like the Nokia N95 I had before, I’ve no doubt its the best phone I’ve owned. That may sound stupid, but until the release of the Google Nexus last week, or the Acer Liquid or Motorola Droid (and all the amazing Droid’s 2010 is set to offer), I don’t think there was better phone available. IPhone fans shut your mouths (we’ll see what’s coming in Apples late January announcement), but HTC definitely produced something special in the Hero, as they have in the Nexus/Passion and are bound to do the same with the Bravo, Desire and others.

All the praise aside, nothings perfect, and my little Hero was no exception. In fact it suffers from the same ailment as many devices fall victim too, where hardware vendors release their products with poor/inefficient software. So without going into too much detail on the ROM, as I’ve done that before, I’ve come up with what my idea of the perfect setup is for a fast, secure, ultra useful phone that does everything for you.

The ROM

In my previous article about the Android ROM’s, I blogged about some of the ROM’s available for the Hero platform, the most mature and reliable definitely being MoDaCo’s custom ROM (now at version 3.2).  After trialling Android 2.0/2.1 ROM’s I didn’t want to go back to a cupcake build (Android 1.5) so I’ve settled on Kagudroid 1.0-beta, made by Lox of LoxDev fame, a ROM which aims to be as clean as possible built from the AOSP sources.  It’s Sense-less in that it doesn’t have any of the HTC SenseUI software on there so there’s RAM and general speed improvements and runs smoothly and fast.

Kagudroid 1.0beta
Kagudroid 0.1beta (running on AOSP 2.0)

The Perfect-ly Obvious

They deserve a mention as they’re used almost more than anything else on the phone, but any of the google suite is an absolute must if your a google account holder.  GMail, Maps, Places Directory and Tasks are what I use most often, but Google Goggles (image searching) is pretty nifty.

The Perfect Set of Utilities

Due to wiping the phone so many times, I’ve got a a set of applications (as well as their DB’s, so I don’t have to set them up every time), which I load before booting the new ROM.  I consider them essential and it’s just not the same without them.

Locale – Event Driven Profiles

(http://www.twofortyfouram.com/)

Locale’s that profiles menu on your old Nokia 5110, revitalised in way that profile selection is made almost completely automatic, driven by an event system that can act on almost anything thing the phone does, like GPS location, WIFI availability, time, date, battery health, availability of networks/services, etc etc and hundreds of combinations of each.

Locale profiles screen

The Locale Profile Screen

These are my standard set of profiles (in order of preference, as they’ll override each other):

  • Bedtime - In the vicinity of ‘Home’ after 11pm on a week night, phone notifications are silent, GPS turned off and Alarms set on loud to make sure I wake up the following morning
  • Home – In the vicinity of the house, WIFI and bluetooth on, and volume set to relatively low
  • Low Battery – Triggered anytime the battery is below 20%, basically shuts down 3G/Wifi data, GPS and Screen time out to increase time until phone death
  • Office - In the vicinity of the office, WIFI/Bluetooth on and phone almost on silent, screen timeout set on high and Screebl (see below) disabled
  • Default – Phone on loud setting, GPS/WIFI on (for location services) but most other services off as they’re unused

Locale Profile Edit

See?  Infinitely useful, and I’m only just using the most basic of features.

Screebl

(http://www.keyeslabs.com/joomla/index.php/projects/screebl)

Screebl is a simple app with one purpose, it saves battery life by keeping the screen timeout as low as possible, but at the same time using the phones accelerometer to detect when the phone is being held and keep the screen on while using Google Maps, messaging, web browsing etc.  The new version (v2.0) includes Locale plugin support to change Screebl settings on Locale profile change.

Wavesecure – Security

(https://www.wavesecure.com/)

Wavesecure definitely deserves a mention, even though I’ve fortunately not had to use it’s most useful features.  It’s a security app, that runs constantly and checks into a remote server where if the phone is lost/stolen you can physically lock down the device to disable it, and if required wipe it clean to protect personal data.  It’ll also report phones location upon request and can backup files/SMS on a scheduled basis.

WavesecureWavesecure

Advanced Task Manager

(http://arronla.com/)

Advanced Task Manager is perfect for keeping the phone running as quickly as possible at all times, by automatically closing all non essential apps and freeing up much needed RAM.

Advanced Task Manager Home Screen

The Perfect Set of Apps

There’s a load of other apps I use as well on a constant basic, but may not be quite as essential as those listed above

Dolphin Browser

(http://www.dolphinbrower.com)

I’m yet to see the newest HTC and/or Android brower from Android 2.1, but Dolphin Browser is much better and fuller featured than the Cupcake browsers that I used, it’s got tabs (on the screen where you can see them), Google bookmark sync to help typing out those pesky web address’s and a simple to use gesture feature which make the touch screen experience even easier.

Twidroid (or Seesmic too for ping.fm support) – Twitter Clients

(http://www.twidroid.com)

What can I say, I’m a Twitter geek, and Twidroid is defintely the most full features twitter client i know of, it lacks the streamlined integration of Peep, the HTC client but’s very configurable and looks sharp

Newsrob – Google Reader Client

Simple idea, scheduled retrieval of RSS/Podcast and Blog updates from my Google Reader account

Truphone & SIPDroid – VOIP Clients

(http://www.truphone.com)

You may remember Truphone from my N95 articles from a while back and I still use it too for cheap world wide phone calls, and free voip -> voip or skype calls all from within the program.  I’ve been testing SIPDroid as well with my VOIP carrier sipgate.co.uk.  The only problem I’ve got now is choosing which number to give to people as my primary number, I’ve no doubt within a very short time period VOIP accounts like this will be the norm on all data plans.

XBMC Remote Android (android-xbmcremote)

(http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmcremote/)

I’d only recently started using XBMC remote on an old laptop and it has revolutionised the way I watch media on TV, but one thing that annoyed me was needing a wireless keyboard/mouse to interact with it (or even worse, getting up and going to the TV to change media), until I found XBMC remote, like a virtual remote that works via HTTP over WIFI.  It can access almost every function within XBMC including whats playing, media list, info, etc and will even do WOL (Wake on LAN) to start the computer up after its been switched off.  I’ll never have to get off the couch again!!!

XBMC-android remote

Others

  • Transdroid – For access to a transmission-daemon for torrent monitoring, I use it for a number of torrent clients now, very useful! (http://www.transdroid.org/)
  • chompSMS – Not essential, but who wouldn’t want the IPhone’s message screen, an almost exact copy from what I can see (http://www.chompsms.com)
  • Better Keyboard and/or Shapewriter/Swype – Keyboard replacements that definitely make typing faster on the device (in fact, I’m typing this blog post with it right now!… .Not, but you get the idea)
  • SetCPU – for over/underclocking to increase performance or increase battery life (one of life’s true dilemmas)

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Posted in Android, Development, Eclair (2.0), Hero, Mobile, N95, Tech | Comments

PEBKAC – Newb mistake

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

PEBKAC (peb-k-aac)
- abbr.
1. (exp.) Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
2. the result of the use of a machine by a fool, who should not be left in control once again
3. idiot..

I’ve been using linux in some form or another for well over ten years now, and I’ve (at least in my mind) been past the n00b stage for the better part of that time period. Of course, in my case, it doesn’t matter if I was an occasional user or the Grand Pu-bar of Gentoo-vian I’d still make mistakes, and this week I embarrassed myself terribly.

My beloved home NAS (QNAP TS-409 Pro that I wrote over a year ago) has been customised in many different ways and although underpowered when compared to the rest of the computers in the house has taken over responsibility of many things that my laptop(s) previously did, such as:

  • Headless Transmission (Bittorrent) client
    • Auto downloading based keyword searches from RSS feeds
    • Scheduled speed changes (off during business hours, 1/3 speed during the evenings, then full speed at other times)
    • Daemon controllable web client (clutch), Android app (Transdroid) or one of the many transmission remote clients for Windows, Mac and Linux
    • Automatic seed ratio checking to stop seeded downloads at a certain point and unpack/move the downloads their area (Music/TV/Movies — all legal of course)
  • Automatic remote backup
    • Rsync backups from the hd911.com server
    • SVN mirror for remote development SVN server, and a primary personal SVN server which is replicated elsewhere
  • UPnP server for my XBMC PC, pushing all available media content, photo collection to any UPnP client
  • Subsonic Media Server –  mainly so I can stream my music collection to my phone, or when I’m out or at work
  • and all the other features that come with the device as standard

Needless to say, I use it for everything, and now I can’t due to a momentously stupid change to /etc/passwd, where I altered the root account (the only one accessible remotely) login shell from /bin/sh to /bin/bash, which ashamedly isn’t accessible until after logging in (some magic in .bashrc) to link the bash from the optware/NSLU2 installation in /opt/bin back to it’s normal place /bin. Now unfortunately, I can’t login at all (except via the web client), but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to change the value in /etc/passwd so I can fix it.

Links to an article that seems somewhat relevant :P

The things I’ve tried so far are:

  • Basic telnet/SSH login attempts, running a command as part of the SSH statement (i.e ssh admin@qnap.****.local cat /etc/passwd)
  • Issue chsh to attempt a login shell change (ssh admin@qnap.****.local chsh /bin/sh)
  • Writing a dodgy web script (total failure)
  • Writing one of the QNAP installable packages (a QPKG) which appear to have elevated system privileges during install (can’t find enough information)
  • I can’t take the drive(s) out to replace the file easily as its 4x drives in RAID-5 and I don’t have a PC to load them into
  • I also can’t wipe the device as it (to my knowledge) deletes all data off the drives in the process.

The way I see it, I’ve now got two choices, either to buy a large HDD and move all the shared stuff off before wiping the device and starting again although this is not perfect as I’ll lose all the scripts and configuration that aren’t accessible via network share.  My other option is finding someone with a PC and 4x SATA ports and attempting to re-mount the array, this is probably the best/most reliable the way, but I believe it or not don’t know any one with such a machine, and we’ve all got Macbooks at the office.

Any ideas, anyone?

Posted in Android, Linux, Tech | Comments

The Path to Android 2.x

Friday, December 4th, 2009

As I’ve said before the best thing about my Hero is the development community pushing out an almost constant stream of updated ROM’s for the phone providing:

  • speed/storage improvements with kernel optimisations, swap/compcache and supports running apps from the SD Card on a range of filesystems (ext2/3/4, BFS, etc)
  • new pre-release updates showing off new Android and HTC SenseUI features
  • security software (Droidwall & Wavesecure) for protecting the phone from network attack, and locking it down/wiping it if stolen
  • software packs and updates from other phones (Motorola, etc)

The principle resource at the moment for the development of ROM’s is the Hero android development forum at XDA-Developers, ROM’s so far:

MoDaCo’s Custom ROM (www.modaco.com)

Download/Info Link:

[ROM] 02/12 3.0 – MoDaCo Custom ROM Core / Chinese with TCK featuring Wavesecure

Paul from Modaco first released his ROM in August with releases every few days/weeks ever since.  It was a breath of fresh air after the initial software release that shipped with the phone (1.76.xx), and after v1.5 most of the speed, lag issues on the phone were all but gone.

Android Version: Cupcake (1.5)

Versions: 1.0 -> 3.0 (2/12/2009)

Features:

  • HTC/Sense UI based
  • Optimised build from official HTC updates
  • Newer versions include Tecknologist’s Custom Kernel (TCK) 1.9
  • Rooted (of course)
  • Includes wifi-tether, busybox, Spare Parts, Wavesecure etc

Drizzy’s MotoBlur

Download/Info Link:

[ROM][PORT] Drizzys MotoBlur v1.0rc2 for Hero [STOPPED NO MORE DEV]

Now discontinued ROM showcasing the Universal contacts feature from Motorola’s BLUR UI.

Versions: 1.0 (September 2009) – [DEPRECATED]

Android Version: Cupcake (1.5)

behnaam’s Donut Clean ROM

Download/Info Link:

[ROM] Clean ION 1.6 for our Hero v1.0 [30/10/09]

This ROM was an attempt at a clean (no Rosie/Sense UI) build of Donut (Android 1.6) for the hero, but since the release of the Kernel source code and pre-release Android 2.0 leaks all development has virtually stopped.

Android Version: Donut (1.6)

Versions: beta

Features:

  • Clean Donut build free of HTC’s SenseUI

Lox_Dev’s AOSP 2.0 Android release

Download/Info Link: XDA-Developers [DEV] AOSP-Eclair-2.0 (version beta1) – 29-11-2009

First Android 2.0 build for the Hero

Android Version: Eclair (2.0)

Versions: Beta1 (30/10/2009)

Features:

  • Clean (AOSP) Android open source project build, with no Google Apps or HTC SenseUI

Behnaam’s Hero v2.1

Download/Info Link:

[ROM] Hero 2.1 v1.3 – It’s here by Behnaam w/ base from KingKlick [3/12/09]

Bleeding edge HTC SesnseUI based ROM with Android 2.1 and all the new 2.0 features, involves work from barakinflorida, eugene, kingklick, drizzy and a few others.

Android Version: Eclair-bugfixes (2.1)

Versions: 1.1 -> 1.3 (3/12/2009)

Features:

  • HTC/Sense UI based

Posted in Android, Eclair (2.0), Hero, Tech | Comments

Android Initiation

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

In August of this year I was adopted into the Android family sold my Nokia N95 8GB (after replacement post beer immersion) for a decent sum using the massively over-advertised service MazumaMobile.  After a fair bit of research I was attracted to the Samsung i7500 (Galaxy), but after waiting a number of months for its delayed release, went with the HTC Hero instead.


The HTC Hero with Sense UI

In hindsight this was without doubt the best decision  due to a few reasons:

  • it’s the first Droid with custom UI (SenseUI), and while slow/buggy at first has moved in leaps and bounds since (now other manufacturers have their own UI
  • the developer community supporting HTC Android devices helps with update and optimisations
  • hype around the Hero and its release (as well as an ‘award’) have made it very popular boosting community support
  • right from the start there’s been a few dedicated devs who’ve been releasing custom made and highly optimised ROM’s/kernels based on pre-released HTC and Google builds
  • did I mention SenseUI yet?

In contrast, the Galaxy has a large OLED screen with fantastically vibrant colour output and clarity, but there’s just no dev community and the hype has all but died since its initial release.


The Samsung Galaxy i7500 with stock Android UI

Stating the obvious, but one of the things that makes Android a great platform and sets it apart from the iPhones, Symbians and Blackberrys of the world is its open nature and customisability which doesn’t help when there’s no developer community to hack away at kernel compilation, optimise builds and boot process, make customised themes or cross breed apps/software accross other Android devices.

With Motorola Milestone, Sony Experia X10 and a multitude of models from Acer, Dell, HP (some big names in the computing industry there!) as well as a whole list of upcoming HTC Droids, the next few years is looking exciting.

Stay tuned for a series of posts about the Hero, and its hackery.

http://www.hd911.com/2008/01/nokia-n95-yes-the-black-8gb-one/

Posted in Android, Hero, UK | Comments

Nokia N95 8GB – The Dark Side

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Nothings completely perfect, and there’s not enough information out there on the failings of most products, and this is no exception.  It still has no sway on my decision that at present it is the coolest phone that reasonable money can buy.

As anyone knows from my previous posts on the Nokia N95 8GB, I have an awesome amount of respect for this phone and its older brother the Vanilla N95.  It’s the perfect travel companion in regards to email, light web browsing, GPS/Mapping and a nifty little media player, in the case that a small laptop (or a pretty much immobile 17″ one for that matter) is too cumbersome to carry around.

Dark Side

Gman – Dark Side

But I musn’t go on, I’ve repeated myself enough already.  So on to the point of this post, you see, it has a dark side.  A few of them actually, Possibly not as major as the iPhone missing 3G support (until late July, anyway), or the NASA rocket, which was programmed for calculations in Miles, but data entered in metrics, but it has a down point.

I’ve found that no-one really talks about the N95’s points, the review sites are too concerned with the quality of the camera, or that it has thirty one and a quarter more features than the equivalent Sony Ericcson, Samsung or LG device.  And often if you search for what I would consider issues, you’ll find a small forum thread with two or three people discussing the problem, its just not heavily publicised.  So here’s my attempt to keep it real, level the playing field if you will.

The Major – Data Transfer Speed

The transfer speed to/from the N95 is nothing short of horrendous.  In this day and age of flash and other storage devices which can read up to (and in excess of), 50-100MB/s, the data transfer to the fixed flash card is a pitiful 500-600KB/s.  This wasn’t an issue when phones had 256 or 512MB free memory, as filling the device would still only take a few minutes.  Filling the full 8GB card takes the better part of three and a bit hours!

True Speed

A faster data transfer medium

My 4GB iPod Nano has a file transfer speed of approximately 10-15MB/s a second, and I can fill its memory just under 10 minutes (not including the time it takes afterwards to level sound output and “determine gapless playback information”).  If Apple can get it right on a 2 year old, cheap as chips, consumer device, then why can’t Nokia achieve better than USB1 speeds on their “flagship” device?  I’ve been assured it is USB2, just not High speed (HS) ~480mbps.  Instead, we’re stuck with Full Speed (FS) which is marginally faster than the USB1 spec of 12mbps, Pitiful!

This probably wouldn’t bother most people as there might not be much of a need to be removing and replacing the data on the memory card often, but when you’re uploading movies, music and videos on a nightly basis this becomes a real pain.  This is the one thing I can see that might make the original N95 a better choice, as it has a removable memory card, so you can put it any old card reader in the hope that it may read/write faster.

Other

The rest of the bad points come as a direct result of comparing the N95 to the Apple iPhone.  That’s usability, and design, and interestingly enough battery life.  It really is just too complicated, sometimes just the easiest tasks can require 10-15 key presses.  Considering the keypad (not including the numeric keypad) consists of over 20 keys, you’d think there would be easy, fuid ways to accompolish simple tasks.

Nokia have included a lot of features in the phone that promote its use out in the open, such as using the web browser on a train, or walking/travelling with the GPS Maps app/Sports Tracker open.  In any form of glare or sunlight, this is a difficult task, often to the point where it gets too difficult and I’ll just give up.

Battery life has improved a lot since i did the latest firmware upgrade (I assume a permanently running process has been removed?!), but I still find on days of moderate to heavy use the phone can be dead before I get home to charge it!

Cheeseburger

A worthy competitor??

Considering the iPhone has a larger, more vibrant screen, and it still boasts almost double usable battery life and media playback/talk time, this is definitely something that might need a look in, in later models.

But as I said, nothings perfect, and trawling around the web shows that pretty much any product has its ups and downs, and the techy in me loves (almost) everything about this phone.  So no, I still wouldn’t trade it in for an iPhone, HTC (Windows Mobile) phone, Blackberry, or Cheeseburger phone despite their positives.  I just can’t help but think that it may have been a bad business decision letting these fundamental features slip, when they’re elsewhere in the market for a much cheaper price.

Tags: ,
Posted in N95, Online | Comments

Nokia Sports Tracker

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

It’s been a whlie since I posted an article on the N95, and thats not to say it’s falled out of favor, or I’m bored of it.  To tell you the truth, this truly amazing piece of portable technology, continues to enlighten me, and still I’m finding new things out every day.  A couple of months ago, in my previous post, I mentioned Nokia Sports Tracker, which at the time, was a buggy, horrible example of beta software.

That’s all changed though, Sports Tracker is now a powerful, bug-free (at least from what I’ve seen), exercise accompanyment which is a damn load of fun to use at the same time.  Broken down, it:

  • use GPS to map speed/distance travelled on a map;
  • allows you to set routes for commonly travelled paths, and records times for previous workouts so you can beat previous routes;
  • includes a Step counter to approximate work done and energy consumed;
  • updates progress, and live workout status online, updating the users profile (ala Facebook).

Nokia Sports Tracker Online

Nokia Sports Tracker Online

I’ve now completed the 3.5 mile walk from the office to Waterloo Station 10 times, and got my time down to 24 minutes, though I’m sure this could be a lot better if I wasn’t walking through peak hour traffic to get there.  And best of all, the GPS/live part still works jammed in my pocket.

Tags: ,
Posted in N95, Online, Travel | Comments

Nokia N95 – GPS & Maps Application Comparison

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

With the huge choice of applications available for Symbian hardware and the N95 it’s often hard to find the perfect tool for the job, and GPS apps are no different. So like my previous articles, I’m going to try to report the pros/cons of each of the GPS/Navigation applications I could find for the Nokia N95 & S60v3 platforms. There seems to be an enourmous amount of applications that all do approximately the same thing which makes finding the perfect one especially difficult. Do you trust one of the older players in the GPS market like Garmin/Tomtom, the kings of the internet map sites Google Maps & MGMaps (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc) of finally one of the other mapping applications, like Nokia Maps or Map24Mobile.

1. Nokia Maps

Availability: Free (Comes with Phone)

Seeing as this is the default maps app that comes with the N95 it seems like a logical place to start, and with it’s voice navigation (a paid addon) and great integration it may be hard to top. That is, until you use it and try and get it to point you from a to b. It,s not that it does a terrible job, it,s just so slow at everything.

Standing in full view of all the eyes in the sky (read: satellites) from starting the app until it had located my position it had taken about 45 seconds to a minute. It,s just not responsive enough to warrant whipping it out of your pocket when your late for a meeting, but you can’t for the life of you remember where Ord Street North is, let alone trying to get it to give you directions whilst behind the wheel.

On the other hand, it has access to a decent point of interest database and standing in front of Westminister Abbey i found the map littered with places to see, eat, etc.

Pros
  • Default app that comes with the phone
  • Well integrated into nokia’s gallery & other phone features
  • Great points of interest database with clear icons
  • Has Voice Navigation (like in-Car Sat Nav Systems)
Cons
  • Slow as a dog (bad boot time, slow map responsiveness, etc)
  • No Terrain/Aerial/Satellite Maps

2. Mobile GMaps

Availability: Free

MGMaps is (I believe) a joint effort to bring maps from a range of providers (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, OpenStreet, Ask, etc) to give the maximum choice for finding the perfect map for the required situation. There’s the usual Street Map styled map, through to aerial/satellite and a hybrid of the two, terrain maps (for hiking I presume) and specialised maps with monuments, points of interest clearly marked.

Map with Tube/Underground Overlay

The real beauty with this app, however, comes with the map overlays and addons. Venturing in the the addons menu unlocks a host of options like Traffic reporting, Metro/Underground/Transport Maps, Wikimapia (user built Point of Interest database which is constantly growing) and a few other things that I didn’t really understand. Some of the overlays include geographic position, altitude (approx), speed & direction of travel, which can all be quite useful although can interfere due to the small amount of screen real estate.

Aerial/Satellite View

And where Nokia maps failed due to its slowness, and lack of usability, MGMaps shines, it’s quick and easy to use, the maps are drawn quickly, and the direction/guidance mapping seems accurate and didn’t get me into trouble once.

I won’t go into detail on the mobile version of Google Maps as pretty much everything you can do in Google Maps you can do in MGMaps, but also a lot more. I’m not sure what the exact story is, but I’m assuming Google has otherwise stopped development of its Mobile maps app and is participating in the newer better App.

Pros
  • Free
  • Huge choice of maps and map types
  • Nice selection of overlays/addons
  • Good Direction/Place finder
Cons
  • No Voice Nav

Tom Tom Screen

TomTom: Simple, yet as a navigational tool whilst driving. Perfect

3. Tomtom Navigator 6

Availability: £87 (at time of writing) from http://www.tomtom.com

As I stated in the introduction, if it’s a navigation tool you want for driving and direction finding then look no further, Tomtom is the package you want. Everything is smooth, from the search/menu panel, quick bootup, routing, clear map (showing only path you need to take) and by far the best implementation of the voice navigation than I’ve seen on a phone/PDA yet.

Directions

Despite driving a small car, we found it ever so difficult taking the Walking Route

Like the In-car GPS unit you get to sit on your dashboard, if you’re driving and you really want a clear way from getting from point A to B without having to constantly have a hand on the unit this is the way to go. It’s as simple as typing in a destination, and following the prompts:

  • Take the third exit at the roundabout
  • In two miles follow the shoulder toward the M5
  • Calculating Route (when missing a turn off)
  • Arrived at Destination, Thankyou

And so on… And whilst your on your way you’ll get an annoying *beep* sound every few minutes, or so I thought at the time, until I realised Tomtom was warning me of approaching Speed/Redlight Camera and Dangerous spots in the road

Tom tom Trip Overview

 

The Trip Overview/Planner

The Tomtom navigator is, without doubt, the best drivers friend, its a no frills tool that serves a purpose, and one purpose only. What it lacks in maps, addons and features it more than makes up in usability (and I actually feel safe using it whilst driving, Mobile GMaps took far to much configuration and watching of the screen to be considered safe for driving).

Note: Screenshot didn’t seem to want to work while Tomtom was open, so I’ve used others screenshots

Pros
  • Perfect Street guide, Driving Navigation Tool
  • Seamless Voice Navigation, Traffic/Camera alerts
Cons
  • Lacks all the cool features, like points of interest, overlays and different map types

4. Map 24 Mobile

Availability: Free from www.map24mobile.com

Really not much can be said about this app, it’s not useful for driving/navigation, and it’s speed, ease of use and features are nothing to write home about, but it is in early development. Map24 Mobile does have one interesting feature though, point it to a location and it knows where everything, and I mean everything, is. From my front door for instance, it tells me where the Shell station is, the library, 4 or 5 pubs, the police station and various other shops and restaurants are straight away.

Granted, I’m standing on my front porch, I can clearly see the Shell sign, two pubs and the side edge of a library and restaurant, but I can see it being a life saver when the apocolypse hits and I need to emerge from bunker 714 in pitch darkness and dense radioactive fog, so I’ll keep it on hand, anyway.

“3D View” – I couldn’t find a use for it

Pros
  • Map24 knows retail, it really does
Cons
  • … pretty much everything else

Like the IM Client article, there are honestly too many different apps to try and each would have its own set of pros and con’s, and quite often its own price tag, but I’ll list a few anyway:

From the point of view of the occasional user Mobile GMaps is definitely the one to go for, its very well put together and a full package without a lot of depth. And for the driver/navigator don’t look past the TomTom Navigator client, but I can see where all four apps would quite often come in handy so its probably quite handy to keep them all on at once, as really, you never know when you might need them (where is that Shell Station again?).

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Nokia N95 8GB – The Symbian IM & VOIP Client Showdown

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

I’ve had a few emails since writing my previous entry on my favourite list of software for the Nokia N95. People were especially interested in the Truphone application and just how well it acted as an integrated internet phone application. I thought I’d take the oppurtunity to give my quick thoughts on the other chat/messaging/VOIP applications I’d tried since and list the pros and cons of each to get a fair idea of which app best suited which purpose.

IM - The Message Generation

The apps I’ve tried so far are Truphone, Agile Messenger, IM+ Messenger, MSN Live Messenger, Fring, Gizmo and Slick Messenger. Most are Instant Messenging clients that connect to anywhere from 1 network (MSN) to about 5, including ICQ, AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk, Skype, MSN and various others. If each has pros and cons, I’ll list them and give them a basic rating.

Truphone

Truphone (http://www.truphone.com)

As you may know from my previous article, Truphone was an instant favourite of mine. It’s a Voice over IP application that’s main strength is that it completely integrates with the phone. I’m still yet to find an application that works so well with the N95’s interface, and at the same time never get in the way with annoying popups, or long processes to connect and make calls/send messages when required.

Truphone Home screen

 

The Truphone Home Screen

Setting up Truphone is as simple as installing the app following the instructions on the site, creating an account and choosing an Access point to connect to the server with. Then anytime you’re in range of an internet connection, either via WLAN or 3G you have an icon (a phone over a globe), which allows you to make/receive calls on your specially assigned Truphone number, simplly by Clicking Intenet Call (instead of Voice/Video Call). Like using Skype on a computer it’s not perfect and requires a reliable wireless connection or full 3G for anywhere near normal phone call quality. But it’s crystal clear when its good, and dirt cheap too. In fact, if you sign up and use the service before March 28th, Truphone will give you free calls to most Western countries, both landlines and mobiles.

Truphone application - Showing the connectied Icon

 

The N95 with Truphone connected (as shown with the top right icon)

Pros:

  • Perfect Integration with the phone, no annoying popups, or drawn out call/connection processes
  • Cheap calls and messages
  • Works over both WLAN and 3G internet services

Cons:

  • Call quality can suffer with less than perfect network connection (calling an Australian mobile left a lot to be desired, I’m assuming because of the added latency of the mobile network at the other end).
  • In times of low network service, the constant polling for a better net connection is murder on battery life.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

Agile Mobile Messenger

Agile Messenger (http://www.agilemobile.com/)

I tried Agile Mobile Messenger about the time I first installed Truphone, it really filled in the gaps in regards to an IM Client. Like Truphone the integration with the phone is second to none, and everything really just works. The only thing that lets it down is lack of Skype support, but in reality I can do without it, especially when using such a full featured app. The protocols supported are Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP, IMPS, AOL and AIM, and whilst surely noone can use all these protocols at once, it seems to cover pretty much all bases at once.

Agile Home Screen

 

Agile Messenger Home Screen

One thing that impressed me about Agile was the extensive options and settings in relation to alerts and connection settings. The ICQ “uh-oh” sound was bad enough 10 years ago, and the two other IM clients which defaulted to this, and were forced to this were a definite down point, enough to make me turn them off and uninstall them. Luckily enough Agile doesn’t suffer from this at all, and has an extensive array of choices to manage alerts, sounds and vibration for incoming messages and events. A top notch message client

Pros:

  • Perfect phone integration
  • Cheap Life time registration
  • Good Support accross pretty much all IM protocols

Cons:

  • Battery life problems whilst constantly polling for connection (see a trend happeneing here)
  • No Skype or other VOIP support

Rating 4.5 / 5

Fring Messenger

Fring Messenger (http://www.fring.com)

I tried Fring after my initial trial of Agile Messenger ran out, and was quite pleased with the results. It isn’t (yet) near as refined as Agile, and this is reflected in its interface, but it does seem to have a fair few of the features to back it up. The thing I liked most with fring was its intercompatibility between all chat/messaging protocols, and I could connect to my Skype account as well as the SIP provider Fring uses. Until recently I hadn’t often used Skype, but I have family/friends back in Australia who use it more than any of the other chat services and I’ve found the voice quality fantastic compared to most other computer -> computer solutions.

Fring Home Screen

 

Fring Home Screen

Pros:

  • Connects to pretty much any chat protocol, everything I’ve used thus far, anyway (Google Talk, ICQ, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Skype, Fring SIP service, etc)
  • Like Truphone the Internet/Voice calls are well integrated into the phone, and Skype to Skype is useful

Cons:

  • Clunky interface
  • Battery life death in low connectivitiy situations due to scanning

Rating 4 /5

I’d planned to have a look at the other clients listed at the top of this post, but to be honest I really couldn’t find anything good about them at all. Slack Messenger, whilst having a nice looking interface was chunky, slow, and often refused to connect. The other clients had obvious negatives like connectivity with one protocol/network, in the case of MSN Live Messenger, and the Skype client, though 3 UK’s implementation of the Skype service is great with almost flawless connections over 3G GSM constantly.

Whilst I was recommended IM+ by a few people I found it didn’t compare the other three clients I’ve reviewed, so I’d put it in fourth place. But it’s a pretty even competition between Truphone, Agile and Fring depending on whether you want a fantastic, cheap VOIP service on top of an amazingly integrated client (Truphone), or a full featured and equally well integrated IM client (Agile), or a mix of the two (Fring).

With all this testing of IM/Messaging clients it once again became bleedingly obvious that the only real issue I have with the Nokia N95 is the battery life. I’m used to laptops with a usable battery life of 1-5hrs (and as low as 5 minutes, or a completely dead battery), and it seems reasonable that when used heavily in a situation a high powered phone would have similar life. Despite this, it becomes occasionally restrictive to have to carry around two batteries or be shutting down programs all day just so you can make a phone call on the way home.

To explain why I’m 3 hours late home from work because the pub was calling… of course.

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