BabbleDroid

Trademarks and Android

2010-03-18T16:24:00.002-05:00

"This week has seen two interesting stories about Android and trademarks: Google being denied it’s trademark application on the name Nexus One, and Samsung trademarking the term Android, in reference to hardware, and only in South Korea."

Read on at AndroidAndMe: http://androidandme.com/2010/03/news/roundup-a-tale-of-two-android-trademarks/

Buzz Works on Pre2.0 Handsets

2010-02-13T12:36:00.001-06:00

Some guy (aka me) at AndroidAndMe just posted some info and screenshots on the news page about Buzz working on pre-2.0 handsets.

Take a look: http://androidandme.com/2010/02/news/google-buzz%E2%80%94now-for-the-rest-of-us/

Data Only Plans

2010-02-07T15:27:00.001-06:00

I've been doing some research on how friendly Android is to hearing impaired and deaf users over the past week. In a few days I'll be writing it up into a full op-ed piece and posting it either here or at AndroidAndMe.com. Look forward to it.

In the mean time, here are my notes on what each of the major U.S. carriers has to offer in the way of data only plans. Some of this information I was able to find online but most I had to call in for. Even the web sites that explain these plans are not usually linked from the main plan pages of each carrier's site. Tricky.

T-Mobile:
Data only plans are not available unless you use a BlackBerry. I believe they have retired the SideKick line so no option there either unless you are upgrading from a sidekick to an Android handset.
So, an Android user can get the minimum talk plan, Even More 500. To get unlimited messaging and data it would cost a total of $79.99 per month.

Grade: F
It is ridiculous, as has been mentioned all over the internet before, to not offer a data only plan. There are too many deaf and hearing impaired users who just want to stay in touch on the go.

AT&T:
A plan with data only, and unlimited data at that, is only $30. To add unlimited text messaging, though, it becomes a total of $50 per month. This can be used on any smartphone, so I don't see them adding a no-Android restriction once their Android handset offerings are available.

Grade: B

Verizon Wireless:
VZW offers a $34.99 per month data only plan for featurephone users, which doesn't help us at all. For $54.99 per month, though, you can get unlimited data and messaging on any smartphone.

Grade: B-

Sprint:
Surprisingly, Sprint has the best plan in this arena. SRDO (Sprint Relay Data Only), is a plan offered through their Relay services site, so it's obviously already targeted at the hearing impaired. You can get unlimited data, text, and a 5GB PAM (phone-as-modem) allowance for only $29.99 per month. On the first page for phone selection you have a choice of several BlackBerry phones, the Palm Pre, and the Samsung Moment. Once you click "View more Sprint phones" you can see that the Pixi and, thankfully, the HTC Hero are choices, too.

Grade: A+
Sprint is really cutting out the cost of voice here. If you tack on unlimited data to a voice plan it's usually only $30 a month, so why should it be any more to get a data only plan?

Manufacturer Customizations-- What BLUR, Sense, and TouchWiz Mean for Users

2010-02-04T11:30:00.004-06:00

"Cons: Samsung's TouchWIZ interface hurts Android experience." (InfoSync Behold II Review)
"My opinion of TouchWiz on Android? Sluggish. It just seems to eat up processor capacity for breakfast." (UnwiredView.com Review of Behold II)

"[We] have never hidden our feelings about it (we love it). HTC Sense really shows what Android is all about—the customization." (AndroidCentral on HTC Hero and Sense)

"How successful MOTOBLUR is for you depends on how many contacts you have in Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and how much time you spend glued to your smartphone." (Slashgear on the CLIQ and MOTOBLUR)

As you can see, reviews of the various OEM-created custom Android UI layers run the gamut--from praise to cries of agony and despair. The main problem here, of course, is user preference. Not all of us like the way that BLUR looks, or maybe we prefer TouchWiz over Sense. But at the end of the day, even the prettiest and slickest UI layers can make us go crazy if they aren't efficient and fast.

By now I think most users of Android handsets are fairly familiar with the limitations of first-generation hardware. The standard 528MHz processor found in the G1, Hero, CLIQ, and others seems limiting at times, especially when we weigh it down with extra UI addons that are not optimized to run as quickly as the stock user interface.

So what's the solution? Well, in recent months we've seen what Google has in store for the vanilla Android user interface--Eclair seems to include a lot of the fancy social media integration features that make BLUR and Sense seem useful. The key difference lies in the fact that it runs more smoothly. All the pretty widgets and addons are useless if they don't run quickly and they are doubly useless if the stock operating system has an equivalent or better UI.

In the user community, of course, we have other options. Recently a popular trend in the CDMA Hero community has been to run an AOSP (Android Open Source Project) ROM instead of the standard HTC-developed one. Many of the users at the XDA forums have flashed a 1.6 AOSP ROM and customized kernels, giving users two sources of increased speed.

True, it's not the full Eclair UI, but once again the hacking community has provided an alternative to things like Sense that runs better and accomplishes many of the same goals. While AOSP 1.6 may lack social media integration, the performance boost seems to outweigh the usability features of Sense for the community.

There's no hard and fast rule on which will win, but performance and new features will always jockey for the top position in the minds and hearts of smartphone users.

How do you feel about Sense, BLUR, and TouchWiz? Have you tried a stock or AOSP ROM as well or compared one side by side with a custom UI layer?

Hero Kernel Source Available!

2010-01-22T08:49:00.001-06:00

Well, it looks like early this morning HTC released the kernel source for the CDMA (Sprint) Hero!
And the people rejoiced, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruitbats...

This really is great news. For everyone asking and all the people who are less familiar with operating systems, especially Linux, here's a basic rundown of what having the source code for the kernel opens up for CDMA Hero users:
-Developers can more easily upgrade us to newer kernels, and, importantly, newer versions of Android because they can fully see how the current kernel works.

-The current 2.0 and 2.1 ROMs can be fixed, as there are many issues in them caused by lack of kernel source code.

-We can see more optimizations in the ROMs we flash to our phones. More speed, more power, less battery consumption, etc etc. This is my favourite advantage of having the kernel source.

So, keep your eyes open for new and refreshed ROMs in the next few weeks. It'll be great to see what our Android hacking community developers can come up with.

WTB: CDMA Hero's Kernel Source Code...

2010-01-19T12:11:00.000-06:00

I think many people are oblivious to something that is pretty frustrating for Android developers: HTC has not released kernel source code for the CDMA variant of the Hero.
In fact, when prompted, their customer service reps seem to be confused and often suggest that the code for the GSM kernel is identical to the CDMA kernel, or that HTC has no plans to release such code, or that they have no idea what is being asked for and will pass on the request.

On the CDMA Hero forum at XDA, though, a 30+ page thread has been growing since December 30th, documenting various attempts to get HTC to release the kernel source for the CDMA Hero.

Click here to read the thread, starting at page one. (I'd suggest skimming.)

I'm not going to speculate on the legality of HTC's delays or the intricacies of GPL, Apache, and other open source licensing models. I'll leave that for everyone else to talk about.

However, I DO want this code released. It'll be like putting the CDMA Hero hacking community on steroids, in a good way.

Sprint's WiMax + Android = ?

2010-01-19T10:58:00.001-06:00

I'm not one to put stock in rumours, but if this one pans out soon (and honestly, why wouldn't it?) we'll be seeing the first of the 4G-wars. True, I don't expect aggressive hostility and flaming in ads from carriers and OEMs, but I do see the first "4G" phone being released as a major milestone for cell data.

Personally, I'd rather see Sprint pursue LTE but hey, beggars can't be choosers, right?

See all the info on the new HTC Supersonic at Engadget.

Recovery Utility (aka Part III)

2010-01-19T10:54:00.000-06:00

Whatever you do, don't overlook or skip this step.
(That's right, I used bold text. You wanna fight about it?)

What is a "recovery utility," anyway?
A recovery utility is a special piece of software accessed by holding the Home button during bootup. It allows you access to a lot of the functions you'll need in order to flash, reset, wipe, or backup your phone. Think of it as a gatekeeper and directory for all the cool stuff you want to do with your Android phone. Without a recovery utility you might end up wiping your phone unintentionally and not have a backup to restore from.

The three most useful features of a recovery utility, in my opinion, are:
1) Flash from .zip file.
This allows you to simply place the .zip file for a new ROM, addon, theme, or customization on your SD card and then flash it into place. All you need to do is connect your phone via USB to your computer, use the adb utility from the SDK to "push" the zip file to your phone's SD card. You should be quite familiar with the adb utility and its commands from the rooting process.

2) Make a nandroid backup.
Nandroid (or nand) is a utility that copies everything--everything--from your phone into a folder called "nand" on your SD card. Simply mount the SD card on your computer and copy it to some place safe. Personally, I like to encrypt the folder using TrueCrypt or some other cryptology software, and then place it on both my computer and my spare external hard drive.
Better safe than sorry.

3) Restore a nandroid backup.
The obvious follow-up to making a backup is knowing that you can, quite easily, restore a backup.

Amon_RA has created the most popular (and possibly the only) recovery utilities for the HTC Hero, CDMA Hero, MyTouch (aka Sapphire), and G1 (aka Dream).

There are several more features that are beyond neat and probably should be classified as "downright useful" in a recovery utility. Assuming you followed a rooting guide from XDA, I'm sure you've seen reference to or instructions on how to flash a recovery utility. If you haven't, then open one of the links I just posted to Amon_RA's recovery utilities and follow his instructions.

Make a nandroid backup as soon as you flash the recovery utility, please!

More News...

2010-01-18T10:31:00.000-06:00

In follow-up to my previous post, I thought I should also share the great work that maejrep at XDA is doing to reverse engineer the CDMA Hero kernel.

He's been working on this for a little while now and is making some amazing progress. He posted a paste of the kernel boot log and is now moving along even more smoothly. Check out the thread here.

Good luck, maejrep!

Improvements to the CDMA Hero Community

2010-01-18T10:24:00.000-06:00

As promised on Twitter, I want to talk about how great the Android communities can be. Just recently the CDMA Hero forum at XDA now contains a wiki page listing all the currently available ROMs, recovery images, RUUs (radio unit upgrades), and so on.
You can find this wiki page by clicking here.

What is great about the creation of this wiki page is that it shows initiative. It would be very easy for developers, users, and organizers within an Android hacking community to just leave things as is--previously the CDMA Hero forum, like the forums for other phones, was organized simply by having threads about particular ROMs and recovery images made into sticky threads, thus making the forum a bit difficult to navigate.

Sure, this isn't the biggest news in the world. Big news would be me saying "By the way, the kernel source for the CDMA Hero has been released" (which it has not, by the way.) I'll take what news I can get for now, though.

Some What and Why of root in Android (aka Part II)

2010-01-14T09:26:00.002-06:00

Despite my lackadaisical attitude (or is lethargic a better word for it?) toward updating this blog, I do have more to say. Here is the first part of breaking down the initial root-n-flash process.

"1) Root the phone.
This means you gain root, or superuser, access to the phone's operating system. Just like in a desktop Linux environment, the root account has full access to the system for administration. In order to do any real customization of your phone you will need root access."

The "root" account on a Linux, BSD, or Unix system is the administrator, or superuser, account. Root has a user id number of 0 and is the only account allowed write access to the / (or root) directory of the filesystem. Traditionally, in the earliest multi-user computers, which were essentially servers or mainframes connected to users via dumb terminals, root was essential for controlling, monitoring, and allowing or denying access to other users. On a more modern Linux system, especially in the desktop realm, root is used for mundane tasks such as installing or compiling software packages, making changes to system settings, writing or rewriting data into protected directories (such as the / directory mentioned earlier.)

Most entry and intermediate level users of Linux now have the opportunity to completely ignore the root account, thanks to su and sudo. Su simply means "switch user," and allows you to, while at a terminal prompt, switch to the root account by authenticating with the root account's password. You can then "exit" from the root account and resume your actions as a normal level user. Sudo carries quite a bit more power in that it essentially makes a normal user account a little bit lower than root--sort of like a demigod to the god of root. A user whom root has added to the sudoers list can act as root without logging in as root or using su.

This classic joke comes to mind here:
$/> make me a sandwich
no

$/> sudo make me a sandwich
chicken or turkey?

The benefits of root for an Android system are virtually identical to those of a standard Linux environment. Specifically, though, having root access to an Android phone allows more direct manipulation of drivers and user interface, installation of "forbidden" applications and utilities, and, most importantly to our discussion, the ability to flash new firmware onto the phone. A normal user account on Android is not allowed to flash recovery utilities, to flash custom firmware, to install tethering apps, and several other things that people generally find to be "cool."

Since we are focusing on the CDMA variant of the HTC Hero here, I will suggest reading one of several guides on rooting at the XDA Developers forums.

Once you gain root access, of course, you will want to immediately flash a recovery utility so you can back up your phone and start flashing whatever custom ROM is popular this week.
More on that later...

Disclaimer

2010-01-02T17:34:00.001-06:00

I believe this is a good time, while I'm working on the next post, to give a disclaimer about this blog and about me.

I, by no means, am a software engineer or even a hacker. I'm just the guy who (hopefully) understands the technical part of concepts such as Android hacking and (hopefully) is a good writer. My bachelor's degree is a B.A. in English, with a focus on composition, so my plan is to use my decent writing skills to explain concepts that the non-tech savvy crowd struggles with.

On this blog I welcome comments, criticism, corrections, contributions. (Couldn't think of any more C words.) Please, contribute to the discussion here. This should become a place where people who don't understand technology as well can still learn about the really amazing things they can do with their Android phones.

Root and Flash: Overview (aka Part I)

2010-01-02T11:00:00.001-06:00

Because I am also fairly new to the Android hacking game, I think that my fresh perspective will, hopefully, make it easier for novices to understand the process. What I'd like to do in this brief post is explain the general process for getting a custom ROM onto your Android phone.

Most of us, when we first discover the awesome fact that we can run a hacked/customized/improved operating system, say "Wow, how do I get the ROM with features x, y, and z on my Hero?" or "Quick! I have twenty minutes--help me put on my Moment!"
It's simple enough for the Android users with extensive backgrounds in computers, operating systems, and software development to figure out the process and what it all means from the forum threads, the community sites, and so on. But what about the people who just bought an Android phone because they like the idea, the concept, of an open platform? Or because the Droid just seemed really cool while they were in the store? These people may have extensive backgrounds in technology, or they might not.

Here is my outline of the process, from box to custom ROM. It is also the rough outline of the next few posts here.

1) Root the phone.
This means you gain root, or superuser, access to the phone's operating system. Just like in a desktop Linux environment, the root account has full access to the system for administration. In order to do any real customization of your phone you will need root access.

2) Install (flash) a recovery utility.
For the Sprint HTC Hero, at least, the most popular recovery is found here.
Without a recovery utility like this you won't be able to backup your phone's contents or flash any of the fancy ROMs you want to use. The recovery allows you to boot into a special menu that gives quick access to creating backups with Nandoird, flash ROMs containing new firmware or themes, restore your Nandroid backups, and quite a bit more.

3) Create a backup!
As I mentioned above, the program Nandroid allows you to back up your entire phone's system. This is a great feature and allows us to go backward in time if we break our phones during the flash process.
It's a simple process because of the recovery utility--just boot the phone holding the Home button, select "Make a backup," let it do its thing, copy the backup to your computer.

4) Flash!
The part you're waiting for the most. While gaining root access can take about 15 to 30 minutes (less if you're familiar with a Linux command line environment), flashing a ROM only takes a few minutes and a longer reboot. You simply copy the ROM's zip file to your phone's SD card, boot into the recovery utility, then select "Flash from zip."

Yes, I know this is an oversimplification of the process. It was intentional, too. I want people who are confused by all the guides and howtos on XDA or on wikis to come here, read these overviews, and go back to the guides understanding what they are doing.
It's one thing to follow the guides to the letter and achieve your goal but to actually comprehend what you are doing in each step allows you to better solve problems with your phone and its amazing Android OS.

Immersion Into the Android Hacking World

2010-01-01T21:13:00.001-06:00

Just recently (as in today) I was helping a friend who bought the Sprint HTC Hero about a month after I got mine. My friend, of course, took to the XDA-Developers.com forums as soon as I told him about them and he learned enough to root and flash his Hero within a day or so. This made me think, however, that it would be great to have a sort of "dummies guide" to hacking the CDMA Hero. While there are many resources--guides, howtos, chat channels, forums--for the G1 and MyTouch, it is more difficult to find information specific to the newer CDMA Android phones.

What I intend to do with this blog is create a few "columns" or "editorials" that each address a different general topic or part of the very broad Android hacking community, with special attention paid to the CDMA phones (especially the HTC Hero, since it's my current daily use phone.)

While I understand that the concepts involved are 100% universal--universal within the realm of Android phones, that is--I think the specifics detailed and the resources linked here will be of particular benefit to users of CDMA Hero handsets.