Let’s be honest, US wireless providers are truly awful. With generally crappy coverage they charge excessive fees for substandard service coupled with ridiculous restrictions. Any action that takes power away from them is a good karma, and buying Galaxy Nexus without a contract certainly qualifies.

… Wednesday will be an exciting day.

Galaxy Nexus HSPA+

For me, as a heavy user of Google Docs for at least 5 years, the Google Drive couldn’t come soon enough. I’ve been using Dropbox recently, but the choice between 2GB of storage protected by a regular password  (Dropbox) and 5GB of storage protected with 2-step authentication (Google Drive) seems clear.

Google Drive provides desktop clients for Windows and Mac and mobile client for Android with iOS version “coming soon”.

I strongly believe that the best way to experience Android phones and tablets is by buying Nexus devices with pure Google experience, such as Galaxy Nexus. Pure Google experience means stock Android, no crapware, future updates directly from Google and pre-installed Google Wallet app (Verizon, shame on you).

Galaxy Nexus ships, of course, with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and will be the first phone to get any future Android updates. The phone feels very light (135 g) relative to its large 4.65″ display running at 1280 x 720 resolution. It is truly a world phone that supports both AT&T and T-Mobile HSPA+ frequencies. The full list of supported networks is the following: GSM/EDGE/GPRS (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 3G (850, 1700, 1900, 2100 MHz), HSPA+ 21. Note that AT&T LTE is not supported.

The only notable drawback of this phone is its ordinary 5 MP camera which is not as as good as, for example, camera on Samsung Galaxy S II.

Let’s be honest, US wireless providers are truly awful. With generally crappy coverage they charge excessive fees for substandard service coupled with ridiculous restrictions. Any action that takes power away from them is a good karma, and buying Galaxy Nexus without a contract certainly qualifies.

For further praise of this phone let’s now turn to these two notable Googlers, Jean-Baptiste Queru:

BUY NOW.

It’s SIM-unlocked, supports all the HSPA+ networks in the US and in Europe and roams happily around the world.

You don’t need to sign a 2-year contract to get your hands on one. You can use it with any type of SIM you want, you can make operators compete for your business and switch whenever you want. You can even us it without a SIM, it becomes a WiFi device that can also call 911.

and Tim Bray:

It’s got, by a wide margin, the best radio I’ve ever carried. They say “Pentaband”; what that means is, if you’re a heavy traveler, go anywhere in the world and you’ll be online with fast data toute suite. I suspect it might just be the best phone in the world for globetrotters.

If you are in the market for a new Android phone, you should strongly consider getting Galaxy Nexus. The only other phone which may be worth considering specs wise is HTC One X, but it ships with HTC Sense 4.0, which is a step down from stock Android Ice Cream Sandwich experience.

Apple is famously strict with the apps it approves for use on the iDevices, but it has just approved one uncharacteristically useful utility called Bluetooth OnOff. This app adds a simple Bluetooth toggle to the home screen of an iOS device, thus saving numerous taps to get at the settings.

Bluetooth OnOff is selling for $0.99 in the App Store.

Revolutionary or resolutionary?

The importance of your email account security cannot be overstated, because via password recovery a hacked email can potentially provide access to most of your other accounts, including bank accounts. Jeff:

Your email is the skeleton key to your online identity. When you lose control of your email to a hacker – not if, but when you lose control of your email to a hacker – the situation is dire. Email is a one stop shop for online identity theft. You should start thinking of security for your email as roughly equivalent to the sort of security you’d want on your bank account. It’s exceedingly close to that in practice.

The good news, at least if you use GMail, is that you can make your email virtually hacker-proof today, provided you own a cell phone. The fancy geek technical term for this is two factor authentication, but that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that until you turn this on, your email is vulnerable. So let’s get started. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right. Freaking. Now.

Here’s what happens when you lose your Gmail account, described by James Fallows:

When [my wife] came back to her desk, half an hour later, she couldn’t log into Gmail at all. By that time, I was up and looking at e‑mail, and we both quickly saw what the real problem was. In my inbox I found a message purporting to be from her, followed by a quickly proliferating stream of concerned responses from friends and acquaintances, all about the fact that she had been “mugged in Madrid.” The account had seemed sluggish earlier that morning because my wife had tried to use it at just the moment a hacker was taking it over and changing its settings—including the password, so that she couldn’t log in again.

…

The greatest practical fear for my wife and me was that, even if she eventually managed to retrieve her records, so much of our personal and financial data would be in someone else’s presumably hostile hands that we would spend our remaining years looking over our shoulders, wondering how and when something would be put to damaging use. At some point over the past six years, our [email] correspondence would certainly have included every number or code that was important to us – credit card numbers, bank-account information, medical info, and any other sensitive data you can imagine.

But what if you use email, which doesn’t allow two-factor authentication? Switch to Gmail. Again, Jeff Atwood:

Either nag your email provider to provide two-factor authentication, or switch over. Email security is critically important these days, and switching is easy(ish). GMail has had fully secure connections for quite a while now, and once you add two-factor authentication to the mix, that’s about as much online email safety as you can reasonably hope to achieve short of going back to snail mail.

Please, follow this wise advice and enable 2-step authentication in Gmail. Right. Freaking. Now.

Google had almost one year to prepare for this event and the best they could come up with was “first come, first served” process.  Which wasn’t actually the case, because it was more of a lottery, where you would repeat this exciting sequence: click register, wait, get “sorry, try again” message, rinse and repeat. It took me well over 20 attempts in multiple browsers to get in at 7:17, just 10 minutes before all tickets sold out.

There was a trick that apparently let you register a bit early (hint: view the source of the registration page), but this falls far short of the “be sure to brush up on your coding skills” November hint of a possible coding challenge. So how can this mess be solved?

First of all, stop the giveaways at the conference. Yes, it’s exciting to give free stuff out and have your Oprah moment during keynotes, but it hurts more than helps. Serious developers will buy hardware on their own and Android is well past the time when giving out phones or tablets was necessary. Some targeted giveaways at the sessions are probably ok: good examples from the last year were Android Accessory development kit (Arduino) and Sony smartphones given out at the corresponding Android sessions.

Second, allocate more tickets via coding challenges. Last year some tickets were awarded to the winners of the coding challenges, but the number of these tickets was minuscule. Increasing the number of tickets allocated this way would be greatly appreciated by the development community.

Third, drop silly registration requirements such as Google+ sign up. Google IO events are about developers and building developer community. Requiring Google Wallet can somehow be justified, but silly Google+ requirement just pisses developers off.

And finally, follow the promises that were made prior to the registration. The Google IO 2012 registration page still says “registration will be first-come, first-served”, which clearly wasn’t the case. I realize that if the process would indeed have been first-come, first-served, all tickets would’ve sold out in the first few minutes, but either change the process or give it an honest description: a lottery.

With a rooted phone the easiest update process is to use ROM Manager (Download ROM -> Stock Images -> Nexus S 4.0.3).

If you don’t have root, follow these manual steps (if you are new to the update process, check out this slightly outdated, but detailed update guide).

• Download the update package.
• Rename downloaded file to update.zip.
• Copy the update.zip file to the phone’s internal storage.
• Turn the phone off, press and hold Volume Up and Power to boot into the bootloader.
• Using Volume Up/Down select “recovery” and press Power button.
• After the exclamation point in a triangle appears, hold the Power button and press Volume Up.
• Using Volume Up/Down select “apply update from /sdcard” and choose the update.zip.
• After the update process is finished, select “reboot system now” and press Power.

Enjoy!

Sources: XDA, koush.

Once upgraded, check out tips and tricks from Google listing main workflow differences with Android 2.3.

Galaxy Nexus is a successor to Nexus S and is the first phone to ship with fully redesigned Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). This is also the first Nexus phone available on Verizon’s network, which is considered to have the best coverage in the US. The specs are impressive: 4.65″ Super AMOLED HD display with 1280 x 720 resolution, 9.5 mm thin and weighing only 150g (5.3 oz), 5MP main camera, 1.3MP front camera, 1080p video recording, NFC, and 4G LTE network support. But the main selling point of Galaxy Nexus over other Android phones such as Galaxy S II is the pure Google experience ¹⁾, meaning stock Android, updates from Google and absence of carrier’s bloatware.

I’m a big fan of Nexus phones and I think they provide the best Android experience for reasons described in these brief reviews of Nexus S and Nexus One.  My only concern about Galaxy Nexus is the screen size, which maybe too big for some users. I used to think that 3.7″ of Nexus One was the optimal display size, however after using Nexus S I now prefer 4″ display. But jump to 4.65″ may be a bit too much, so if you plan to buy it online, I recommend taking some time to play with the phone in the store first.

For more information about the phone, see the full list of features and specs and check out Joshua Topolsky’s review and Jason Kincaid’s comparison of Galaxy Nexus with iPhone 4S.

¹⁾ Pure Google experience is slightly tainted by the absence of  Google Wallet, but at this point only Nexus S from Sprint supports it.

P.S. Due to various offline commitments this blog went on a 2-month break. What a great occasion to resume our regular programming.

Among the newly added devices notable additions are: HTC Desire S, HTC Incredible S, HTC Incredible 2, LG Optimus 2X,  T-Mobile G2x, Motorola Droid 2, Motorola Droid X, Samsung Captivate, Samsung Fascinate, Samsung Vibrant, Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy S2 (multiple carriers), Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, Arc, X8, Mini, Mini Pro, Neo, Ray (full list).

CM7.1 release is based on Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread). You can see the full list of changes here, but the few that stand out are:

• native screenshots in the power menu,
• camera touch-to-focus,
• revoking app permissions,
• upgraded kernel.

Another good news is that Sony Ericsson assisted CyanogenMod developers in adding support for Xperia phones by “providing over 20 devices, technical assistance, and compatible hardware drivers”. This is a great move by Sony Ericsson, which should be followed by other manufacturers.

The easiest way to get CyanogenMod 7.1 is via ROM Manager. Detailed device-specific installation guides can be found at CyanogenMod wiki.

Source: CyanogenMod blog, Android Police.

• 7″ Android-based Amazon Fire tablet was unveiled and will start shipping in US for $199 on Nov 15 . The main selling point besides its low price will be access to the vast library of books, movies and music from Amazon. No 3rd party reviews are available yet, but This Is My Next has some photos and videos from the brief demo. Reportedly, Fire is running highly customized version of Android 2.3, which was originally designed for phones. Android apps can be installed via Amazon Appstore. Notably absent are any Google services, such as Android Market, Maps, Gmail.
• Microsoft and Samsung signed a cross-licensing deal. The details are confidential, but reportedly Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung’s Android-based smartphones and tablets. Another major Android manufacturer, HTC previously signed a similar deal with Microsoft.
• Most popular custom Android ROM Cyanogenmod will support all 2010 and 2011 Xperia phones, such as Xperia Arc and Xperia Play. Coupled with unlocked bootloaders, this makes Sony Ericson one of the most mod friendly Android manufacturers.
• Google Wallet was launched for Sprint Nexus 4G. It is a new tap-to-pay service that allows storing credit card information on the Android phone and making payments using the phone.
• Hipmunk for Android has launched. Hipmunk is the easy way to search for flights and hotels.

 

• Google Voice for Android update fixed the annoying self-pause and delayed notifications bugs.
• Google+ signups are now open to everyone. Google+ for Android added a lot of features including hangouts (video chat with up to 10 participants) support.
• Skype 2.5 added official support for video calling for 14 more Android devices. Click on More button under the app description for the full list of supported devices. Generally, video calling should work on any Android 2.2+ device, but on devices not officially supported it needs to be enabled in the settings.
• Voice Actions for Android now available in UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Voice Actions can be used to speak into your Android phone and dictate texts and emails, get directions and launch turn-by-turn navigation, listen to music, set alarm clock, call businesses and contacts, and browse the web.
• Nielsen published a list of Top 20 Android apps by active reach in the US. Top 5 apps: Google Maps, Gmail, Facebook, Google Search and Youtube.
• For new users, Spotify now requires a Facebook account to sign up.

This acquisition will have a significant impact on many aspects for the Android world: from its Nexus brand, carrier availability, and better OS integration with hardware to a better defense against recent patent attacks on Android.

More reaction to follow.

One feature that makes soft button experience slightly better is a haptic feedback: a brief vibration when a soft button is pressed. In addition to soft buttons, vibration also occurs when phone dialer buttons are pressed. Depending on the model of your Android phone, this feature may or may not be enabled by default.

On Gingerbread and Honeycomb devices (Android 2.3+) haptic feedback can be enabled or disabled in the Settings -> Sound -> Haptic feedback.

Haptic feedback setting on Gingerbread devices

The most significant advantage of Nexus S is that it provides a pure Google experience, which means stock version of Android and no carrier or manufacturer bloatware. Another significant benefit of stock Android is built-in support for USB tethering and portable Wi-Fi hotspot for no extra charge (at least, that’s the case on T-Mobile network). Google experience also means that Nexus S will be the first phone to receive future Android OS updates.

It looks like AT&T version of Nexus S does not  support 4G, which is a good thing. 4G drains battery faster than 3G or 2G and there is no way to turn 4G off and keep 3G on. The only way to save battery is to turn both 3G and 4G off which leaves only slow 2G (EDGE) connection. Since 3G provides quite decent download and upload speeds, I don’t think the benefit of extra speed with 4G justifies the extra battery drain.

I’ve been personally using Nexus S for few months now and in my opinion it provides the best Android experience. The screen is amazingly bright and clear and 4″ is the perfect display size for the phone. Nexus S is surprisingly light (129g/4.5oz) and thin (10.9mm/0.43″) and is quite fast.

The only aspect of Nexus S that could be lightly criticized is its battery life. Nexus S uses AMOLED screen that drains battery a bit faster than regular LCD screens. That extra battery drain is quite justified by the brightness and quality of AMOLED display and in my experience Nexus S always lasts a full day under moderate usage and 1.5-2 days under light usage. However, under heavy usage the battery could be fully drained before the end of the day.

Nexus S was originally released in December 2010 and if you need to buy or upgrade an Android phone today, Nexus S is the obvious choice. However, if you are not in a hurry, you may consider waiting till November or December of 2011 when a new Nexus branded phone will be released. The upcoming Nexus phone (possibly called Nexus Prime) will be shipping with a major update of Android OS called Ice Cream Sandwich which can roughly be described as an Android Honeycomb optimized for phones.

Nexus brand has come a long way since original Nexus One launch in January of 2010. With Nexus S phones available on 3 out of 4 major US carriers, a pure Google experience is now available to more Android users than ever. Verizon, it’s your turn now.

Catching up with the last week’s news:

• Roll out of the major upgrade to Android Market for phones has began. User interface has been redesigned from scratch to improve discoverability of apps and games.  If you are in the US, this version adds ability to rent movies and buy books from Android Market. Android 2.2+  phone is required for the update. You can also install the update manually by following this link.
• Google+ client for Android has been updated with few nice new features:

• Google Maps added live traffic coverage for 13 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland. This is a great news, since Google Maps is one of the best Android apps and its turn-by-turn navigation puts regular GPS devices and most other navigation apps to shame. The new traffic information is available in Google Maps for Android, iOS, and mobile browsers.

• During Google’s Q2 earnings call, Larry Page mentioned that 550,000 devices running Android are activated each day. That’s up from 500,00 daily activations just 3 weeks ago.
• VMWare View client for Honeycomb has been released for a free tech preview. The app allows to remotely access your computer using an Android tablet running Honeycomb.
• Google Shopper app for Android has been updated. As a part of the pilot program, residents of Portland, Oregon, San Francisco Bay Area or New York can take advantage of the Google Offers, with other cities to follow. This update is available for Android 2.1+ devices.

• Google Maps for Android was updated to version 5.7. New features include turn-by-turn transit navigation (beta), photo viewer for Place pages, and streamlined user interace for getting directions.
• Google Maps update also added a very useful add-on to the Labs: offline maps download. To enable the add-on, open Maps -> More -> Labs and select “Download map area”. To actually download map tiles (10 by 10 mile region), long press on any point on the map, click on the pop-up window with the address, and select “Download map area”. After download is completed, outline will show regions where offline map is available.
• Skype released version 2.0. New version includes redesigned user interface and video calling for selected Android phones. Unfortunately, as of now video calling is available only on the following phones: Google Nexus S, Nexus S 4G, HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia pro. The good news that video and audio quality during calls over 3G is excellent. Source: Android Police.
• Google launched its social network called Google+ to private beta. First reviews are overwhelmingly positive with praise for such features as circles and hangout (group video chat with up to 10 participants). Service is currently in beta and requires invitation to sign up, but you can add your email to the wait list.

Notable articles:

• An extensive article by Fortune magazine on how Android conquered the smartphone world titled 100 million Android fans can’t be wrong.
• A comparison by Mika Mobile of experience with Battleheart game Google Market and Apple App store. The takeaway: ”Daily revenue from Battleheart on Android is fairly close, within 80%, of it’s iOS counterpart at the moment.”

This has changed today and both video and audio calling now works flawlessly over T-Mobile’s cellular network. Google Talk video and audio chat requires Android 2.3.4+.

Source: Android Police.

However, once a custom SMS app such as Handcent SMS is installed, you will start receiving duplicate notifications for each received text message: one for the stock messaging app and another one for the custom sms app. To fix this, go to Messaging app -> Settings and uncheck Notifications.

In this case, however, notifications did work. The solution was to go to market.android.com in the computer’s browser and install a 3rd party launcher to the phone (ADW.Launcher in this case; LauncherPro is another popular option). He was then able to pull down notifications on the phone and start ADW.Launcher and forget about the stock launcher.

Not only did this solve a problem of the stock launcher being stuck in the Force Close loop, but he is now enjoying multiple advantages of the ADW.Launcher and wondering why he didn’t try it earlier. For few examples of the ADW.Launcher niceties see this post.

The secret to Swype’s success is that it is a word based text entry. In a single motion you draw a path over the letters of the word and swype figures out which word you meant. As a result, Swype is very forgiving of inaccuracies: you don’t need to hit each letter precisely – getting near the letters of the word is usually good enough.

Once I started playing with Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (thank you Google I/O 2011), my first reaction was: “Where is Swype”? Swype 2.x did not support Honeycomb and typing using stock keyboard on a 10″ device turned out to be much more exhausting then typing on regular Android phone with Swype. Well, Swype 3.0 has just been announced and it adds support for Honeycomb devices (Android 3.0 and 3.1). Here’s the list of new features:

• Swype v3 introduces two major new features: Tap Correction and Horizontal Word Choice List
• Our Tap Correction engine utilizes many of the concepts that make swyping so accurate. Seamlessly go from typing to swyping and back without missing a beat!
• The Horizontal Word Choice List replaces our popup word choice window, giving users an experience more in-line with evolving Android standards. It also makes dictionary control and word selection faster and easier.
• Swype v3 is available for devices with HVGA, WVGA, FWVGA, QVGA, WQVGA, WSVGA, qHD screen sizes
• Introducing a special Honeycomb-only WXGA version for Android tablets, with features like “moveable keyboard” that you won’t find anywhere else!

When I thought about using Swype on a tablet, one thing was very clear: there’s no need to utilize the full width of the 10″ tablet  in either landscape or portrait mode for the onscreen keyboard. And I’m very glad to report that Swype got it right and 3.0 supports 2 modes: full-size and condensed:

Swype supports 11 languages: Chinese, Dutch, English UK, English US, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Get it at beta.swype.com.