I run a small blogging site named Hot Off The Tech, You can check out the blog in my signature.
I recently wrote up a comparison on the various Android UI's. What Is The Best Android UI?
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I am a beginner in writing Android apps and would like to be a part of the group to get a more in depth understanding.
View 4 Replies View RelatedIs it necessary to limit how deep the activity stack can become within an application?I'm implementing a browser-type app. Every time the user clicks a link, I could launch a new PageView activity, but then the activity stack might become very deep. Alternatively I could have a single PageView activity that changes its content when a link is clicked, maintains an internal history and overrides the BACK button.Is there anything performance-wise to choose between these two designs? Is it OK to let the activity stack become arbitrarily deep?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI'm currently learning OpenGL ES programming on Android (2.1). I started with the obligatory rotating cube. It's rotating fine but I can't get the depth buffer to work. The polygons are always displayed in the order the GL commands render them. I do this during initialization of GL:
CODE:...........
On surface-change I do this:
CODE:............
When I enable backface culling then everything looks correct. But backface culling is only a speed-optimization so it should also work with only the depth buffer or not? So what is missing here?
Currently, I am targetting the emulator to make Android application which is targetted for an Android device which includes 5" 24bit display. Only currently android emulator (or android in general) only appears to support 16bit. Meaning we are experiencing dithering issues why it isn't really necessary. Now my question can I somehow recompile Android 1.5 emulator image so it's using 24bit instead?
Or is this impossible without a lot of changes? Currently, I am predithering the images but no fun ;)
Dear Sir, As I know, Android only supports RGB 16-bit color depth format. Could Android play 24-bit color RGB format video and REALLY see 24-bit color now? If it is not, will it be supported by Android Donut in the future?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI just received my HTC Desire on Orange, rooted and de-branded it. Works fine now, I'm on SW version 1.15 as otherwise, I get issues on Orange.
However, the color depth on my device is very poor, it looks like it only has 256 colours if that makes any sense? A bit like on the old PCs when you rebooted and your display graphics drivers weren't properly installed.
Is there any way I can reinstall display drivers on Android? I hope this isn't a hardware issue.
My name is Moondog and "I'm a tehno-phobic Moto Droid newbie"..Although the Droid is pretty easy on the basic stuff, I am sure that there is lots more I could do with the phone.I've read the online manual, but it doesn't get into much detail.Does anybody know where I could find more in-depth instructions?
View 3 Replies View RelatedAbout the color depth on the Samsung Galaxy.
While it is advertised as having a 16 Million color display (24bpp) it is only running at 16bpp: $ cat /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0/bits_per_pixel 16
Some say that it is a restriction of Android 1.5 itself which was only capable of supporting up to 16bpp screens. Android would be down sampling to 16bpp whatever the screen supports.
I've searched the available documentation over and over and can't find anything like that.
As I see it Android 1.5 would indeed be capable of displaying 24bpp images properly given that the screen is capable of and configured to do so.
Here is a CNN article with a good "quick" comparison of the four top Android phones. It says 2.2 will be out for the Incredible by "September".
View 22 Replies View RelatedWhich phone do y'all think is better? the Droid X or the HTC evo?
View 11 Replies View RelatedMy friend has the HTC Evo and I recently got the Galaxy S Captivate. As soon as I got it, he proceeded to tell me (rather show off) how he THINKS his phone is better than mine. I know there are draw backs to the Captivate but I don't think the Evo is better than it. I say it's more of a draw once you tie everything in.
View 10 Replies View RelatedNow before I start on the iPhone comparison I'm going to pre-empt the normal "But Android is open source....." response by saying lets be honest and admit it as it stands Android is not an open source project because the public "open source" repository is pretty worthless in its' current state.
The last time I tried to build the master branch it failed missing some Google internal API classes. The SDKs I've produce from the cupcake branch seem to be considered by Google employees as pretty useless with comments like "This is why we want to be clear it is "unofficial," because it is not actually a working SDK" being thrown around and networking in the emulator still being broken a week after users started reporting the showstopper problem (And Romain did hint that Google have a fix, I read http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/msg/41fcefc36bd16d44 as "there is a version where this is fixed"). And as we all know you can't use it to build the exact versions of the open source parts of either of the two firmware versions that have shipped on the G1.
To me it seems little more than code dump which is aimed at ensuring Google can keep saying "But it is open source and not just a Google project"
Now, in the last week I had few conversations with iPhone developers so I could compare the Android developer experience to that of what is perceived as our nearest competitor and they are laughing at us (seriously, when I mentioned the G1 most of them responded by initially chuckling). The general consensus among them was;
- Yes, you pay $99 for the iPhone dev kit, but you get "free" external testing (i.e. at apple) and commercial quality support with many queries being turned around in hours or a couple of days at worst. Compare that to some of the support queries on b.android.com for basic problems things like a Android failing to connect to wireless lans with hidden SSID (http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1041) which, after *five and a half months* is still marked as "New" and doesn't have a single response from a Google employee.
- The most common cause of App Store listing rejections are things that users would complain about anyway. This includes things like performance characteristics, UI anomalies, and inconsistent behaviour. This is the type of stuff that is left for users to find out on Android and only comes to light when 1* or 2* comments are posted and even then you don't know if it's a one off on the users device or possibly something specific to their region (http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2372).
- The normal amount of time from submission to app store listing is around 7 days. Some apps take months to go through the approval process, but that is because of intellectual property concerns, concerns over offensive content, or is because the app has to be re-reviewed a few times to meet the apples performance and behaviour guidelines. Yes it's not as fast as Android, but you know that once it's on the market it's of a quality where you're not going to get bombarded with user queries about problems straight off.
- Most of the developers actually feel valued by Apple and feel that Apple does what it can to make sure they get the tools they need to do their job and ensure they're apps. This has been re-enforced by allowing the developers to beta test the new firmware and develop against it.
Personally, it's made me shell out $99 for an iPhone SDK, dust off my Nokia N81, and spend $75 on eBay on a Blackberry so I can explore the alternatives.
Link below, I own neither phone but find it hard to beleive the Evo 4's video quality is this bad so want to hear from users of this phone. Is this comparision accurate?
View 3 Replies View RelatedA real Nexus One VS iPhone3gs comparison.
YouTube - Google Nexus One Vs. iPhone 3GS
Code...
View 42 Replies View RelatedI am wondering if there is a pics app that will cover all my needs on my Desire. Currently running both the Nexus1 Gallery and the default HTC Photos. Both have good and bad points.
HTC Photos
Good:
-Only shows my pics, not the album art and ebook art stored elsewhere on SD
-Has a simple Facebook pics option
-Uploads direct to Picasa/FB,etc
Bad:
-No Picasa albums viewable (most of my pics are on Picasa)
-Cant multi tag pics (needed for doing bulk uploads/shares)
Nexus1 Gallery
Good:
-Beautiful interface!
-Shows Picasa galleries automatically
-Has multi-tag
-Uploads direct to Picasa/FB,etc
Bad:
-Shows EVERYTHING on my sd card, and has no option to remove pics/directories
-No basic editing options (crop,rotate,etc as the HTC app has)
-No Facebook albums display
I'm trying to use the code below to connect to an online source, then compare the data as it is read line by line against what is typed in an EditText field before displaying the next page. At the moment when I run it and press the "Sign In" button nothing happens. The problem seems to be with the comparison of the data.
View 5 Replies View RelatedSeven ways PC World is wrong about the iPhone-Android matchup
This is very pathetic, obviously written by an iPhone fanboi. When you get to the multitasking part watch how he can only switch between 4 very small apps and that's all he does.
I'd love to load this new leak, and currently have it downloaded and on the SD card waiting to go. However, I REALLY don't feel like reloading everything and repositioning all my icons and redownloading stuff. So, my question is this: how "in depth" can a back up get? For instance, I have the game "Replica Island" that I've played probably 30 or so levels, I'd hate to lose all that stored information too. Can a back actually just do a complete restore after loading an OS?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI did the same thing with the incredible and i basically got the same result; The iPhone picture, at least to me, seems to accurately represent colors while the Evo picture seems to be washed out.
I took the Evo picture with a 1 m resolution (1280 x 768)
I uploaded the iPhone pic first so it should be on the left.
Here's the last of my video comparisons between my iPhone and my new Evo. Please leave good comments if you like these. Also, youtube search reiththestud if you want to see parts 1-4.
YouTube - HTC Evo 4g iPhone comparison part 5
So I have been playing around with different kernels and settings and logging them in System Panel. I will explain details below each pic. Usage was the similar each day with a little bit of tethering, alot of web surfing, imobsters texting and email with kids playing some games here and there as well. Running Fresh 3.2 with different kernels on different days. Monday night I installed Fresh 3.2 and ran the Fresh kernel with SetCPU ondemand and screen off profile and ran it the same way through Thursday. Late Thursday evening I installed Kings #9 bfs kernel and uninstalled SetCPU and ran it all day Friday Late Friday I reinstalled SetCPU and set it to conservative and ran it that way all day Saturday. As you can see, Tues, Wed, and Thurs were all very consistent. Tues I got appx 15-16 hours, Wed I got 14-15 hours and Thurs appx 12-13 hours. Friday was by far the best just letting the kernel do its thing with no SetCPU. Saturday sucked! Battery was dead by 6 pm with appx 9 hours use. I just flashed the Fresh stock kernel back on and uninstalled SetCPU and will see how that compares tomorrow. Sure would like to see the 1.5 days flipz is getting! I have read several places now that SetCPU may be counter productive since the newer kernels are managing things better lately. Does anybody know if the Fresh 3.2 stock kernel is using HAVS?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI did a video comparison between my Evo and my first gen iPhone. These are my impressions from being a former iPhone user. Enjoy, and please leave comments as you see necessary.g (My SD card filled up while recording this so it's in two videos)
Let me clarify. This is not meant to be a definitive review or comparison. I am not a professional product reviewer. I'm just a tech enthusiast give you guys my impressions of my Evo versus my iPhone. I'm sure people will notice things that I let out of this, and I've already noticed quite a few things I meant to say but forgot. Please take my videos for what they are, first impressions.
Here's a link to photos I took: Dropbox - Photos - Online backup, file sync and sharing made easy.
YouTube - HTC Evo 4g iPhone comparison part 1
is the screen size of incredible same long/narrow screen as droid (moto)
View 2 Replies View RelatedNo other video for you all to drool over! Flash kills browsing in Android 2.2 Froyo. (Doesn't use evo, uses nexus one running 2.2)
View 3 Replies View RelatedBetween the droid X and captivate...and wow...you can play both of them at the same time and they scroll pretty well together.Motorola's Droid X vs. Samsung Captivate In Video Test:AndroidSPIN | Your No.1 source for Everything Android.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI just want to make an informed decision after rooting. Sure I may try more than one but I don't know where to start. I'm open to recommendations preferably backed up with reasons. I'm an ubuntu user but I prefer GUI over the terminal. My terminal literacy is almost nonexistent.
View 1 Replies View RelatedFirst let me disclaim: I am not a phone expert, reviewer expert, or anything. I work in the IT industry so I have a natural built-in ability to "deal" with buggy stuff more than a typical end-user. Some folks have posted their experiences here, I thought I would too. Let's roll.
First things first, the shipping/packaging. The warehouse had tons of Epics in stock on day 1 and there was 0 problem getting it shipped to me (I use a corporate account). So we can put to rest the concerns of a shortage like the Evo, at least for now. The packaging is slightly more wasteful (full rectangle vs the Evo's sardine-tin look) but is very nice and pretty typical of a cell phone from Sprint. The phone comes with a charging cable (micro-usb), a plug adapter for the cable, earbuds, and manuals. There is a ton of safety-tape all over the phone. I actually like this, it ensures you have a crystal clear exterior out of the box.
Putting it up to the Evo, I noticed a few things. It looks a LOT nicer when turned off. The phone is just sexy. It's very sleek and full black, rather than the Gray-ish Evo. At first I loved the lack of buttons, just makes it much more sleek, but this came back to bite me later. I saw a reviewer say that taking away the Sprint and Samsung labels would make the sex appeal of the turned-off Epic go through the roof and I couldn't agree more. It is lighter in the hands than the Evo, and the shape feels more comfortable in my hand. When using the Evo, I found myself constantly setting off the soft buttons on the front. On the Epic, I find myself constantly setting off the hard buttons, mostly the camera button on the lower right side. Not a major issue.
The other hardware items are a nice upgrade: the charger being on top presents a much more preferable configuration, when holding/using the device plugged in, but also when using it in the car or at a desk; there is less cord bending needed. The volume rocker on the left isnt as nice as the Evo�s in my opinion, but that�s such a minor issue for me I didnt even care. Some folks complained about the battery cover; it is seriously no more hassle than the Evos and it feels identical in the pressure needed to pry it off.
Turning on the phone is BLAZING fast. I always hated how cellphones took longer than PCs to boot, but the Epic squashes this -- it's unbelievable. So nice to boot in under 20 seconds...
The camera�holy cow. I never thought I�d care but the back facing still and video camera is amazing compared to the Evo in quality. Now, the Evo has a slight advantage (at least mine) in color quality, but in sharpness, field of view, and options, the Epic blows it away. This was suspected, since Samsung makes camera products. The earbuds are nicer than some that come with the Blackberries my office uses, but to be honest I hardly ever use stock accessories, so I dont think Ill use them. Having a few sizes of rubber covers is nice.
Lets turn it on. Right away a former Sense UI user might be bummed. Touchwiz 2.5 is nothing close to Sense. Yes, I do realize apps can fake the clock and other widgets. But this review is about the PHONE not what apps can make modifications to it. The UI is a major disappointment and the Evo blows it away. That being said, USING the UI well that checkered flag goes to the Epic. Despite the lack of useful bits and pieces in TW 2.5 moving to the desired location is easy and fast on the Epic, more so than the Evo. With the screens, I compare the Epic and the Evo to butter and ice, respectively. The Epic screen is smooth, always, even after 100 swipes. The Evo is smooth at first, but if you repeatedly swipe back and forth, you get more friction as time goes on. I really think the Epic glass is superior in that regard. I have not been able to test strength of glass, because this is not a free phone. =P
I went to lunch today with both phones, and while the Epic is miles past the Evo indoors, the outdoors is a different story. The Evo seemed to alter its brightness to counteract the glare. The Epic did not change at all. It was near impossible to make out emails and video on the Epic. I have not played with or tweaked settings, so this chapter isnt finished by any means, we may be able to adjust this.
The GPS�.hoo boy. This has been a long contended item in this community. Obviously the previous Galaxy S phones reported a lot of issues, and I think the Epic is just another in the line of problem children in this arena. My GPS did not work out of the box with any apps. Only after downloading a free app called GPS Status did it actually connect to satellites. Then, the other apps like Maps worked. The Evo, on the other hand, simply worked. Out of the box, with no nudging or coercing. The epic was a huge disappointment for me in this realm because a big portion of the usefulness and fun of the phone for me deals with GPS, and to have it be so buggy.yuck. Ill hold up a glass and toast the Samsung guys the minute this is fixed, and I have every hope that it can be, with software.
Another thing that bugged me was the paltry selection of apps. Oh dont worry, we got Sprint Zone, Sprint TV, Sprint Football, Sprint Curling, Sprint Foxhunting, and Sprint Midget Wrestling, but painfully absent are App Sharing, separate apps for Camera and Camcorder, Navigation (I cant find this on the market either so any help getting this on my Epic would be appreciated), Google Search (duh, shouldnt this be mandatory? Sometimes I dont want to use the widget!), and many others. It REALLY felt like HTC went the extra mile to give us tons of stuff we can use out of the box, and Samsung left it to us to go get. To me, no problem, but to an end-user that can be a real pain. Especially my problem children. =)
For settings, it felt like the Evo just kinda worked like Id expect. The fact that the screen stays on longer before it shuts off is nice. The Epic is literally something like 10 seconds which is horrible. Yes, you can change it. Yes, I like the fact that HTC seemed to take more time thinking about how a normal user would use their phone.
Now, the keyboard. I love the keyboard, Ive been using it for e-mails over 2 sentences long, but to be honest, 95% of my time I use the Swype keyboard. Before Swype was out, I would have loved having a hardware keyboard but now I am thinking that it is less of a need and more of a want. The buttons are a nice size, and I disagree with complaints Ive seen in the past regarding the space button its juuust fine.
The last major nitpick I have is the soft buttons. They suck. They have bizarre timing for being lit or off, and even if you know the order of the buttons: menu, home, back, search, tapping near them doesn�t work, you have to remember EXACTLY where they are. So muscle memory from using the phone for a few weeks will help with this but I hope this is another software fix that we might see, or a settings adjustment somewhere.
All in all I LOVE the phone. Its sexy, it fits into my pants so much nicer than the Evo, and I haven�t even dipped into the real advantage: the graphics processor. Maybe Ill do a follow up review on that side of things. I will be sending my Evo back and keeping the Epic. It has some great potential and I like the improvements over the Evo.
I know this review has seemed a bit like Im a bit of a downer, but I thought it was important to go through each component and I tend to be a bit harder on gadgets, since I work with them daily and need them to be top notch.
Overall, Epic gets 4 out of 5 Squiggs.
YouTube - Samsung Epic 4G Vs. HTC Evo 4G Comparison
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