When a reset is news

So why is it newsworthy to post because my EVO spontaneously rebooted today? After all with my long history using Windows Mobile devices soft resets, unexepected or otherwise, were a way of life. Heck, even my Palm Pre treated me to Luna restarts fairly regularly and a number of soft resets.
But when my EVO up and spontaneously rebooted itself this morning I was truly surprised...because it's a rare occurrence. I can recall two other occurrences since July. And I beta test software people. I have never had an OS, desktop or mobile, recover so gracefully from misbehaving apps and run away processes. It's not perfect but it's a real treat relatively speaking.
So if you can cut through all the wailing about Android fragmentation I think you'll find there's something pretty good going on here.

Blogger-droid Test Post

This is a "Hello World" post using Blogger-droid. I rarely post to my blog but having the ability to do so from my EVO might come in handy. The interface if very simple but functional. Text formatting is not supported but pictures can be captured and included with your post. Finally, labels (aka tags) are also supported.

Simple but effective. Let's see if this enables me to post more frequently.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.12

Things I Miss About webOS - Updated

I thought this post could use a refresh now that I have really settled in with my EVO

My Sprint EVO is an awesome device, Android seems like a solid O/S and Sense UI is serviceable. That being said I have started up a list of the things I really miss about webOS.

Multi-Tasking:
Sure Android has multi-tasking but the UI to leverage it is an afterthought, in fact it hardly qualifies as a thought. The "card" concept in webOS stands as the high water mark for an intuitive UI laid on top of multi-tasking on a touch based device. I am digging through a pile of Android apps that claim to help with this, no winners yet.
UPDATE: webOS multiple-tasking still rules. I have given up on any Android apps to try to help with multi-tasking. I have become accustomed to app switching in Android and it will suffice...'Nuff said.

Unique Notification Sounds:UPDATE-SOLVED
I loved being able to have different notification sounds for each mail account. Admittedly webOS didn't launch with this but they got there fast enough. Android is a bit uneven handling this. Gmail allows for notification sounds by account but the HTC Mail client does not.
UPDATE: Android 2.1 took care of this and it works nicely.

Synergy:
Android tries this, but Synergy is better
UPDATE: Synergy is still better at consolidating contacts but Android's calendar does a pretty fair job at bringing together all of my Google calendars and my Exchange calendar from work.

Palm Backup:
Sure my EVO has a microSD card but I gotta figure out how to backup to it. There's not even a stock client or app for it. Never mind that expansion card backups are worthless if you lose the phone the card is in. Palm's back up is easy, automatic and worked...even if it didn't back up every single thing.
UPDATE: Still haven't taken the time to work this out, kinda dumb on my part.

PIN Timeout - SOLVED:
With Android I have to enter my corporate enforced PIN every single time time I wake the EVO up. It drives me nuts and its complete overkill. With webOS my screen time out was 30 seconds but my PIN timeout was 15 minutes. Thus I could be trading texts with folks and generally be jumping on and off the device and NOT have to enter my PIN number a bajillion times. This makes things a lot more tolerable.
UPDATE: Android 2.1 fixed this and I am endlessly thankful.

I'll probably think of more but this is a start.

Google iCal Support Stinks on Ice

Google Calendar's iCal feed support is bad...there...I've said it. The emperor has no clothes. My iCal feeds regularly take 24-36 hours to refresh. Its been this way for months. That's simply not good enough in my "change by the minute" life.

I'm not the only one saying it as witnessed by the growing unrest in their support discussions...just do a quick query for "ical refresh". Google knows its an issue as noted in this "understated" FAQ in Google's Calendar Support Pages:

"Currently, calendar feeds are automatically updated by Google Calendar every few hours. We understand that some users want to have the ability to refresh the calendars they added manually and we are exploring various ways to enable this. If the calendar you're subscribing to using Google Calendar isn't refreshed after 24 hours, please send us the calendar address and the detail of the problem so that we can investigate. "

Every few hours is tough to take. 24 hours before you think this is a problem? Really? That's laughable. Even worse, its a silent failure. There's no last updated info available. I have to go to each subscribed calendar to see if Google is accurate. If I have to do that then what's the point? And it's likely that some users don't even realize there's a problem until its too late.

Google, if you want me to take you seriously and depend on your services as the focal point for my life then this HAS to get fixed. Google centric phones with this kind of backend calendar support don't deserve the consumer's support yet either. Many Google-centric phone buyers (G1, Hero, Droid, even Palm Pre to some extent) are finding this out too late to do anything about it.

Things my Palm Pre does Wrong

Updated: Some things have been fixed along the way :)

My personal list of things my Palm Pre does not get right.

WRONG!!!!!
No Voice Dial
Treo Pro...press the bluetooth button on my earpiece and speak.
Pre...slide up, enter PIN number, open dialer or hope I have PhotoContacts open, type select...bah! not a good situation in the car. I literally have to pull over or just avoid calls in the car. What a waste of time.
Cannot select the amount of time to snooze an alarm
5 minute snooze? Really? Flippin' annoying when I need to remind myself to get going somewhere and hour prior but need that 5 minute warning just before the same event.
UPDATE: Preware and a patch fixes this one thank you. But it still should be built in functionality.
No categories on anything
just plain dumb to regress like this, Palm OS did it
No "Today" screen"
Good lord do I miss this from WinMo...soooooo handy!
Tasks app is so simplistic its unusable
The basic app in Palm OS and even WinMo is infinitely more ususable than this. Was this a complete after thought?
UPDATE: The stock app is still grim but there are some useful Toodledo based apps that show promise. Done! in particular is headed in the right direction.
Application Space Limit
Really? Hundreds of apps available through the official catalog including some really good ones that I have kept installed. And now I am done. I can't install any more because Palm decided apps should live in a relatively tiny chunk of partitioned memory. So sorry app developers, would love to buy your stuff but I can't buy what I can't install.
UPDATE: Fixed by Palm, thanks!
3 Page App Launcher Limit
I now have a multitude of little apps that can do good (or fun) things. Unfortunately I have to wedge them into one of 3 available App Launcher pages. Was it that hard to perfect and release an "add a page" function? Homebrewers had it done in about 12 seconds.
UPDATE: Easy enough via Preware and a patch but Palm should just support it out of the box.


REALLY WRONG and BAD!!!
Appointments added to Pre do not show up in Outlook via Exchange
started with 1.3.1. simply unacceptable. Work around found thanks to some work by users over at the Palm Support forums
UPDATE: Fixed with an OS update
Appointments show up on Pre that are not on my Google Calendar
started in 1.2. simply unacceptable, seems to be related to iCal feeds from external websites.
Reminders from Exchange events triggering 1 hour early
this paired with the 5 minute snooze limitation is absolutely brutal
UPDATE: Fixed with an OS update
Email notifications not vibrating when ringer switch is on vibrate??
started with 1.3.1, still trying to confirm this one. Seems sporadic.
UPDATE: Fixed with an OS update
Locking devs out of calendar data
Makes it impossible for them to develope killer apps to replace your PIM trash.

Annoying
Battery Life
I seem to crush the battery life on this thing. I look for any opportunity to charge (at my desk, in the car, almost always leashed to a charger at home) Granted my set up may stress this poor little battery. The prime users have to be my email accounts, along with Twitter or web browsing. Dont make that many calls during the day.
Exchange account: as delivered
Gmail (IMAP): as delivered
Gmail (IMAP): every 30 minutes
Gmail (IMAP): every 1 hr

Workdays: off the charger at 5:45am . 50% by 9am. At work I am on roam almost all the time so its even harder on the battery
Weekends: off the charger around 8am, 50% around 2pm, sooner if I make some phone calls. Good coverage at home
UPDATE: Some of the new uberkernels were showing a lot of promise including some incremental battery life improvements. Nothing stunning, but better.

UPDATES:
11/17/2009 at 0930: added battery life entry.
7/2010: updated as a parting gift to my time with webOS :)

Things My Palm Pre gets RIGHT!

Here's my running list of things my Palm Pre gets right. This is just a start

Synergy
I love love love the way my Outlook, Google, Facebook and Linked in stuff come together in one happy little device.

Interface
webOS is just nice to use. You can still see some Palm "zen" in there. Pinches, zooms and flicks are all very intuitive

Form Factor
Maybe its a tiny bit thick but the full face screen with a slide out keyboard are a big hit with me. The round edges make this one of the most comfortable smartphones to use or to carry around in a pocket.

App Download/Install Process
Aside from the stupid app space limit the rest of the app install process is really good. Find it, download it, install it...simple.

Web Browsing
The Pre opened up a whole new world of mobile browsing. Generally speaking I find the browser to be pretty brilliant. It quickly and accurately renders 90% of the sites I visit.

Palm Loves You Man
OK, this isnt so much about the phone but Palm itself (and even Sprint) Palm and Sprint could have over-reacted when the homecrew community sprang up and made webOS their own in less than a couple of weeks. But instead of devoting time and effort to lock these folks out they seemed to just smile a say "hey that's amazing...just be careful using some of that stuff 'cause its likely to break when we do an update". This, in comparison to other companies, was the equivalent of a big warm hug and a welcome to the family. Let's hope this continues and that we see Palm open up better access to the contact, calendar and task...and GPS too.

Rapid OS Progress
Palm has not been shy about pushing OS updates. Lightning fast when compared to other platforms. Apparently Sprint is pretty tight with this process too as we are not hearing about them holding up updates for testing. So keep on delivering those improvements Palm!

Cautiously Dipping my Toes in the Exchange Sync Waters again

So a couple of weeks back the I.T. department flipped the kill switch and remote wiped my Pre (detailed ad nauseum here). Again, I can't bitch too much since the Pre and webOS are clearly not on our supported list for Exchange Mobile Sync.
I submitted a help desk ticket to (a)see if they could explain why I got remote wiped and (b) if they could reset my profile. They reset my profile but offered no explanation for why I got remote wiped in the first place. The resolution included some info that clearly showed my profile had been hooked up to a WinMo and a Palm device. But beyond that...who knows. Did somebody trip across this and decide to mete out some I.T. justice? Am I setting off alarms and error logs when I connect?
After going a couple days I decided to give it a shot again. Its been good for about 6 days but I didn't get wiped until about 2 weeks last time. Hmmmmmmm...

Next Laptop?

My aging G4 Powerbook has eaten another battery and its been kicked to the curb for further OS upgrades since it's not sportin' an Intel processor. So...what to do.

It still runs solid even after 4 years but is obviously slower than the Vaio I picked up last year. I could burn another $80 on a battery and stick it out for another 18 months (which seems to be the life of a battery in this thing).

This was my first Apple product and I gotta say its a really nice piece of hardware. I've enjoyed using it and so has my wife. OS X is all good and iLife is a nicely done piece of software. The Apple is still my preferred photo management and DVD makin' rig even though it's noticeably slower than the Sony. Every single camera that I ever plugged in just worked. I could go on...

Now, my Sony ran Vista really well and it runs Windows 7 even better I will not complain about it or jump on the Microsoft hater-wagon. But the hardware, even brand new, was no where near as good as the Powerbook. This Vaio(VGN-CR320E) without a doubt has one of the worst trackpads I have ever used. The body creaks and flexes and the battery rattles horribly. But it works reliably...and the screen is lovely.

So what's next? Its gonna be a laptop, that much I do know. It will have DVD/CD burner. But other than that I am playing the field. Apple and PC have equal opportunities in my book. More later as this story develops

Palm Needs to Work on Their Backup Scheme

The concept behind Palm's Backup/Restore on the Palm Pre is solid...on the surface anyway. Tie it to your profile and make it dead easy for regular back ups. Need to restore? Reset, sign in, hit the "easy button" and watch it happen. But its got some holes that need to be addressed.

On the subject of back ups. Maybe I should have realized that my pictures weren't being backed up. After all that's a lot of data. Seems like the user manual is pretty darn quiet on this little tidbit, but fine I'll take my lumps. I will not, however, cut you ANY slack for not backing up my bookmarks. That. Really. SUCKS!

Now...restores. You need to give the user some control on what gets restored. I'm sure the "easy button" approach seemed like a good idea at the time but as I learned the hard way a remote wipe on an Exchange accountcan really ruin your day...over and over and over again. Automatically restoring all email accounts is a bad thing when its one of the email accounts that is causing your problems. This will only get more important as the number of apps grow. Sooner or later your gonna get a rogue app that won't let go of your device even after a reset and restore. Just a quick Advanced Options button would do the trick.

Things my Palm Pre Needs...v2

Consider this a running list of the things my Palm Pre needs...

Voice Dialing
Native Password App
Email Search
Snooze Intervals: Every 5 minutes is not good enough, I need 5 min through 1 hour minimum
Categories: and they better sync with Exchange
----ADDED TO THE LIST----
Restore Control: Some things act evil when restored...more here

And yes...I have submitted all of these to Palm via there lovely Feedback/Request page...you should too!