This intriguing indeed. Well, not so since this post is written from my HTC Dream phone. It’s not bad actually… as long as I am not writing an essay it is still in version 1 mode, so I can’t actually expect much from the app. There has been some interesting announcements about android 2.0.1 for the HTC Dream, none that is confirmed. Whatever it is, I’m waiting for cyanogen’s version

The price is for RM1,800. The specifications for the US version of this phone can be read from http://www.google.com/phone/static/en_US-nexusone_tech_specs.html

My comments:

I think it is a great phone to begin with… unfortunately, for my personal usage, I would prefer a physical keyboard. Yes, the Droid has one but based on performance, it is quite obvious that the Qualcomm Snapdragon beats Arm Cortex A8 chips by some margin. I am making this comment disregarding the lack of multitouch on the stock ROM, knowing that it would definitely be fixed by one of the XDA modders around What I am more concerned with is the hardware limitations of not having a physical keyboard; poor emulation for games and the ability to see a bigger amount of the screen without my fingers obscuring it!

The design is gorgeous though. Typical HTC… but I really hope that they will update the G1 into something that is much stronger on the processor front. The G1 has been perfect for me (except for the nagging problem with the contact names, where there is no option to sort through first name and last name). I think it only needs Snapdragon, proximity sensors and a higher resolution screen. That’s it.

I am sure in 1 or 2 years time, this would be achieved. Then I will follow my rules of waiting for another 0.5 to 1 year to buy a good 2nd hand version of it hahaha.

Updated (9/10/2010):

Wonderful news… there is a high possibility that an enterprise version of Nexus One would be released, ala HTC Touch Pro series would include a physical keyboard and bigger battery. This would be terrific. The physical keyboard is very important for those who really dislike on screen keyboards (Yes, I am one of those in the minority who dislike typing against a glass screen! I really prefer ANY physical key presses). Check out that observation made at http://gizmodo.com/5444173/nexus-one-enterprise-version-could-have-a-physical-keyboard-bigger-battery

If you have been a regular visitor of this blog, you will notice that it has been fairly silent as of late. Reason? Simple… I have been extremely busy (physically and mentally) in my work and at home. I do not see it changing anytime soon.

However, I will still blog on technology. Solely on technology and games, etc. as I do need the distraction from work and home life. It is unfortunate that comic reviews will be zero in the coming year because I frankly do not have the time to read much.

My thoughts on faith, God and other spiritual things will be best heard rather than read. Just because I am silent on the written media does not mean that I am any less thoughtful and engaged in spiritual matters. Far from it. However, preaching would be the main mode of conveying my thoughts and beliefs.

Occasionally (very rarely indeed), I do update my other blog at http://erlern.net .

God bless you all and have a blessed year ahead

I have been having the problem of switching between two APNs using my HTC Dream (Cyanogenmod). It is irritating since my 3G settings are different from my MMS settings (does not affect GPRS users). I have tried many suggestions but nothing work. I finally found out the reason for the problem.

Make sure the MMS Settings are as below:

(By the way, I am using Digi’s excellent 3G services)

Name: DiGi MMS (anything you want here)
APN: digimms
Proxy: 203.092.128.160
Port: 80
Username: mms
Password: mms
Server: not set
MMSC: http://mms.digi.com.my/servlets/mms
MMS proxy: 203.092.128.160
MMS port: 80
MCC: 502
MNC: 16
APN Type: mms

I added the items in bold, and voila, it works.

By the way, for my 3G settings, I added APN Type: default.

You can see the details for this free application for Android phones here: http://www.androlib.com/android.application.org-ab-c64-qzwC.aspx

It works on my phone (HTC Dream), however, not all works. As I test the games out, I will put down a list of those that worked on my phone. If you need 1541 Emulation on, I’ll indicate it beside the Game name. C64 files can be downloaded from any of the sites online, since they are now abandonware.

Update (20/11/2009):

• If you have problems with the joystick, just go to “Menu” and “Change Joystick Port” … it will work when it is put to Joystick Port 1
• Be patient with the loading, some takes a long time (most are above 1 minute)… as long as it says “loading…” be patient. If it says, error, select the file that contains the name of the Game – do not press “Start the disk (first entry found)” option.

The List of Working ROMS

• Burgertime (1987)
• Bubble Bobble
• Bruce Lee
• Shamus
• Stellar 7
• Spy vs Spy
• Strider 2 (Graphics not allign… need to adjust the frameskip)

An ideal phone does what a normal phone very well – communication. An ideal phone allows a user to have his/her phone in the way he/her wants. Customisation is a must. Integration is a must. An ideal phone is what caters for the need(s) of the user and anticipates the future need(s) of the user.

I am extremely intrigued by these three modern microprocessors that are powering the new generation of mobile phones. I really wonder which one is stronger and faster? Which one sips the least electricity and which one is the cheaper one (from the manufacturer’s point of view)?

I wish someone can satisfy my curiosity on this.

Update:

1st (12/11/09) Tegra has not been getting much demand except from Microsoft’s Zune HD. Browsing and 3D gaming was very smooth on the Tegra chip. Not sure whether this is due to Zune’s Operating System and the programming, or because of the chip (it is hard to say). Battery life on Zune HD however is excellent; capable of lasting for a whole day without charging, with extreme entertainment usage. However, Tegra is based on ARM11 (dual-core), which is still a generation behind Cortex’s architecture. Sure it compensates with a dedicated GPU (but then so does Cortex). So what I may say is that Tegra specialises in energy-efficient entertainment usage (trounces the other video decoding sizes that Cortex & Snapdragon devices are able to do at the moment), which it does by providing 8 dedicated processors for the Zune HD. Again, this is only a general assumption and conclusion based on what has been written and said. I found media playing (HD quality files) excellent on the Zune HD with no lag and drop in any quality.

When comparing Snapdragon and Cortex A8, I have a feeling (based on watching the videos of various phones) that Snapdragon has an advantage (have a look here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJF63S3yYto&feature=PlayList&p=FCB298013445BFA5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=31). However, I think this is dependent on the web browsing architecture. They are both made up from the same block of ARM architecture, except with some customisations here and there. The main areas of testing comes from video decoding an encoding (recording and playback), 3D gaming (how fast OpenGL ES 2.0 performs under them) and multi-tasking (which we cannot test on the iPhone 3GS, but on other devices like Motorola’s Droid).

So, how are we to settle this differences (to some degree)…

Pit Motorola Droid/Milestone using Android 2.0 against the coming HTC device with Snapdragon (on Android 2.0). Unfortunately with Tegra, the only thing it is on is Zune HD which makes it harder to benchmark against other devices with like platform (ceteris paribus concept).

I’ll update this rambling article when I come across more information.

2nd (14/11/09): I found this from Eurogamer’s prediction over the next Nintendo DS2 that is rumoured to be coming next year -

The current-generation Tegra, as found in the Zune HD, features two pixel shader units, two vertex shader units and two texture mapping units (TMUs) while running at a real-life speed of 130MHz (the 600 and 650MHz speeds are mostly marketing-speak associated with fill-rate). NVIDIA demos have shown the technology as being capable of running Quake III Arena at 800×480 at 35 frames per second with both anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing fully engaged. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ds2-vs-psp2-article

That is pretty good and right up to Arm Cortex’s capabilities I think… considering iPhone 3GS does have a lower resolution than the 800X480 above.

3rd (21/12/2009): Finally, http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/20/icd-ultra-android-tablet-hands-on/… we now have a new tablet that runs Tegra on Android! Android is seriously THE PLATFORM of choice for 2009! Too bad we will only see this tablet (ULTRA) in 2010. What this means is that, we can start comparing the performance of the processors using Motorola’s Droid (Cortex), against Google’s Nexus One (Snapdragon) versus ICD’s Ultra (Tegra) in 2010. Nexus One would be the device for Snapdragon since it is likely to be in its original clock of 1Ghz instead of Acer’s Liquid device that is underclocked at 700+Mhz.

(Image above is the Ultra tablet by ICD)

4th (9/1/2010): CES 2010 has unveiled a whole lot of new mobile processors. What is interesting is that the Tegra 2 has been announced. This is based off ARM’s Cortex A9, which basically makes the “OLD” Cortex A8 near to obsolete. The good news is that Nintendo’s next gen Handheld device (replacing DSlite and DSi, if the rumours are true) will be powered by Tegra 2. The bad news is that, we might not see many devices with Tegra, since many would leap straight to the next, which is a dual-core processor. Full specifications are here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra_250.html

The other big announcement is the updated Snapdragon which will be released most likely in the second half of 2010; get this… Qualcomm Dual-Core Snapdragon! Both cores clocked at 1.5Ghz. This is really nuts, in some sense because Snapdragon has ONLY been released not more than 2 months ago (mostly on Windows Mobile platform). Well, there is no really bad news for us consumers, because this means the prices of devices with these top-end processors (at the moment) will come down significantly when the next gen processors are released commercially. Hold off on buying the Nexus One and Droid, iPhone 3GS, etc. especially if you are a geek for speed. The next level is really coming fast

Compal’s Android Tablet with Tegra 2

This is definitely a follow on to my most famous post on rooting HTC Dream: http://erlern.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/rooting-htc-dream-singtel/ . When you have successfully done so, your immediate joy of being able to run so many programs and modified ROMS on your set will be short lived upon realising that the paltry stock battery of 1150mAh cannot last for long. And then you will hit another snag and begin to pout. Well, that is until you hear me out

~

I have been finding for an extended battery to be used on my HTC Dream (of 6 months old edy). It has been disappointing for me to search for a reliable battery source that is as advertised. I remember going all the way to Setapak and even further on the hope of getting an advertised 1600 mAh battery only to find (at the last minute when I am there) that the advertisement was wrongly typed; it was the normal 1150 mAh which they intended to sell for RM80 – 90. Sigh… it was very disappointing (twice disappointed, mind you!).

Which is why I am finally happy to find that the Chinese-made battery by Andida, rated at 1600 mAh, is as advertised. A 1600 mAh would give you a marginally increased usage of 39% over the original. Calculations are simple… 1600-1150 =  450. When compared to the original 1150 = 39.1%. The original stock battery which my Dream came in usually lost about 20% after downloading a 100+MB vidcast episode via 3G. But on this battery, I found that it was only a 7-8% (with screen brightness set at the highest!).

The other improvements in having an extended battery instead of the stock is the lack of heat emanating from the battery cover (lower part of the HTC Dream) which I constantly get when running 3G for long periods of time, while browsing the net. It is now at most slightly warm.

So yes,  I would recommend this battery to ALL HTC Dream users. The upside besides the extended juice is the fact that it does NOT require an ugly battery cover to cover up the improved battery size! I get to keep the original size of the phone, although it is slightly heavier (not too noticeable). But that added weight just confirms that the battery packs a lot more ‘ommpph!’

I can get some if there are any who are interested No more false advertisements.

Updated 9/10/2010:

They are some comments on the batteries not being able to charge. I remember that I had that problem for 30 minutes when I got hold of the battery, until I realise that the battery should not have any seal remaining on it; I took off any plastic seal that may be covering the battery. Below are my now 2 months+ old battery for you to compare and see for yourself.

Bottom View

Top View

Updated 14/10/2010:

Okay guys, becareful with the seller that is selling it under the name mentioned here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=548020&page=12. Quite a number of forum members from XDA bought it and found defective batteries that would not charge. The seller admitted that there was a missing component in the battery and thus is in the process of sending new batches to those who were affected. I am not sure how bad the situation is, but do read through the postings from page 12 onwards.

In the same forum, it mentions that Andida batteries of the same sold by others seem to be working well. Just make sure that it is not produced in late 2009, and it should be fine. Mine was 0809; the August batch. Phew! Will keep you updated.

Please be aware!

This is interesting. Openmoko, the open source phone (Freerunner) manufacturer, and recent WikiReader producer has just changed their name to simply: OM.

Very simple design and I would have to say, it is a good re-branding exercise. “Openmoko” is a mouth full for anyone who has never come across with the company. The colour scheme of black and white works to focus on its simplicity (hopefully reflected in philosophy ) in ideas (like WikiReader).

The picture is a snapshot of the new revamped website.

I tried it twice… trying to use the cooked Chinese ROM (translated to English) and found that the device tends to slow down due to the very sad amount of free RAM available. Mind you that WM6.5 is slightly more resource intensive. I found that I could only run two programs at the same time when on WM6.5. It could have been the version I flashed, but seriously, 64MB RAM cannot allow you to do much. It was so bad that at times I had to clear all programs in order to use the camera!

Sad, but true. On the other hand, remember that it would not be a problem if you are not intending to use a resource hogger like I do (I use SPB’s excellent Mobile Shell 3.0) which makes WM more user friendly and useful. If you are fine with the default home page, then by all means, upgrade it to 6.5. Fundamentally, I see that there is no real difference between 6.5 and 5. You can still use most programs (since they are backwards compatible).

There is the lost of some default input types (on the 21725 version I think), which I have no problem with, since I use Resco’s Keyboard. In the end, the only reason why someone would use Windows Mobile in this generation of iPhone OS & Android OS is because of its customization and tweeking capabilities. The variety of software packages that you can try out is really limitless

So if you want a smooth performance, retain WM5 or maybe just upgrade to WM6.1. If not, be prepared to lose out on using 3rd party Home default programs The choice is yours.

I bought this game: Radiant, because of the high quality in gameplay and graphical design. It is a modern Space Invaders that is definitely much better than its predecessor in many ways.

Check it out here: http://www.hexage.net/radiant/index.html

Buy the game from: http://www.cyrket.com/package/net.hexage.radiant

Your mission? Blast the enemies and survive! It’s that simple, yet done in a very modern-retro (I know… what a paradox!) feel that is easy on your eyes. I want a T-Shirt of this game done!!! Hahahaha.

Anyway, Hexage (the development studio) has done a very good job at the moment in all their games. I hope they will support the Android platform as long as possible. The only way to support these good studios is by buying their applications. It costs less than RM10 ($1.50 UK Pound). And the playability is better than the new games you may have on the PC (at least it is for me).

Now, if only someone will get Dosbox to work for Android!

Update: The latest Beta (experimental release) is out, 4.1.999, which you can get from cyanogen’s XDA link below. You just have to ‘flash’ it by powering off your HTC Dream device, go into recovery console menu mode (pressing “Power” and “Home” buttons at the same time), selecting “apply any zip file from sd card” and then choosing the latest ROM build (4.1.999 – there’s an extra ‘9′ there). Voila… confirm and it will update itself. Enjoy!

For new HTC Dream (Singtel) phones, please refer to my previous post on the steps to root your phone. http://erlern.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/rooting-htc-dream-singtel/.

To update those who do not know anything at all, newbies (like me… I am just a slightly more experienced newbie in this Mod stuff): there are a lot of reasons why you would want to ROOT (gain complete access to your phone and do whatever you want with it) your HTC Dream. This is not illegal in any sense, but it comes with the price of losing your warranty (there are no way around this point since Singtel has NOT released the stock firmware (in other words, the original software that your phone came with) for HTC Dream (although they did release the original firmware for HTC Magic). The other, slightly dangerous downside, is the risk of being exploited by malicious software if you simply install any 3rd party applications without discernment.

Having said that, the mods (modifications) done on firmware softwares (ROMS) are done ‘cooked’ by passionate individuals (the ‘chefs’) who wants to share better ROM versions that are lighter (in size), more efficient (better performance & battery saving) and without the excess (redundant softwares). One of the most popular ROMS around is made by Steve Kondik aka Cyanogen (his nick) under the name coined by fans “CyanogenMod”. Due to some recent problems with Google, Cyanogen had to change the method in which his ROMS function. If you are into controversies, read http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=565510 and http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=564623 and move on.

Of course there are other ROM types out there; http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/howto_hack_your_android_g1_phone?page=0,3 – it’s a long article, but it gives you a comprehensive overview of what is in the scene.

Anyway, I am only interested in CyanogenMod because it follows the Stock (original) ROM closely and improves on it a lot. For example, it incorporates the latest and best enhancements from Google, XDA and other contributors. The last stable release is designated 4.0.4, while the experimental branch ROM is 4.1.11.1. To tell the truth, the latter is very stable by itself. Anyway, because of the problem with Google’s legal department (which in actuality is a valid point since Google owns certain proprietary softwares within the Android system that is non-essential for Android to work), the method of upgrading to the latest DONUT release for CyanogenMod has been made slightly complicated. I really do mean ’slightly’.

The steps are contained here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=567610

However, let me make a clearer step by step approach for the newbie.

Requirements: You need to be using CyanogenMod already (root your phone first using the previous link given on top). 4.0.4 or 4.1.11.1. It does not matter. You also need to have HTC Dream/G1 (T-Mobile’s).

That’s it.

Step 0: Make sure your phone is charged at more than 90% or is actually plugged to a power source. Most problems that I hear of occur because of this little oversight by many who are too eager to flash the ROM, only to have the whole process undone by the phone dying midway, causing problems that many others cannot help.

Step 1: Go to http://developer.htc.com/adp.html and scroll down to “Download Image Packages” and under Android 1.6, Recovery Image, download “signed-dream_devphone_userdebug-ota-14721.zip“, click agree and it will begin your download. Put the zip file into the root of your SD card (not into any folders).

Step 2: Download Cyanogen’s latest ROM from http://n0rp.chemlab.org/android/experimental/update-cm-4.1.99-signed.zip – and put the zip file into the root of your SD card.

Step 3: Turn off your phone completely.

Step 4: Press the “Home” and “Power” button at the same time and hold it, to boot the phone into Cyanogen’s Recovery Menu (if you have no idea what this is, you have not completed the first ‘rooting process’ I referred to previously. Go do that now).

Step 5: At the Menu, click “[Alt+A] apply any zip from sd” using your trackball and then select the first zip file we downloaded in Step 1. Let it ‘flash’ and it will bring you back to the recovery menu. Press “home + back: reboot system now ” and your radio software will be updated and you will return automatically to the recovery menu.

Step  6: click “apply any zip to sd” again, but now go to Cyanogen’s zip file… 4.1.99. Let it do what it does and you will return to the recovery menu again.

Step 7: Select and click on “repair ext file systems”, ‘ext’ refers to the partitions that you made for the linux portion of android (you dont need to know this).

Step 8: Select and click on “reboot system now”… and wait. Yes, the loading will take time, between 10 – 30 minutes. So be patient, and make sure your phone is charged up or is plugged to the power supply.

That’s it. You are up to speed with the latest DONUT updates for CyanogenMod. Enjoy!

This is the best one key button game. That’s right, all you need is just one key press (either ‘X’ or ‘C’). Go far… run, jump, run… make it as far as possible.

Mirror’s Edge better counterpart

I highly recommend this to you.

Browser play at: http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/

I wish the developers would consider making a longer game with this. I would not mind paying USD1 for this

Can you beat my score? I know someone got over 10,000m!

Sad news indeed:

I’ve decided to call it quits on the whole rom making thing. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I haven’t done much work on the rom lately anyway, not to mention the way overdue CRC1 rom that I never got out. I’ll still be around of course, working on smali and hanging out on freenode. But I just don’t have enough interest in doing rom work anymore to continue.

You can read the whole post here: http://jf.andblogs.net/2009/08/20/calling-it-quits/

He is right; the ROM has not have an update in a long time since 1.5.1 was released. Cyanogen has been constantly updating his ROM but I wonder how long will he last too? ROM making takes a lot of passion to do. My overall review of JF’s 1.5.1 is this: very good and stable. I had no problem with navigating through my applications. The occasional force closes were not the ROM’s fault but more of the over-clocking application “SetCPU” which I installed (I suspect). However, I have just installed Cyanogen’s ROM version 4.0.1 yesterday and it has been quite good except that it takes up more RAM space than JF’s. But this is expected since Cyanogen incorporates some elements from the Donut development branch.

Well, so long JF. It has been nice using your ROM. I had no idea that he was going to quit right the day after I install Cyanogen’s ROM… maybe it is just my intuition Anyway, here’s to better cooked-ROMs that will extend HTC Dream’s usability to the end of next year!

This article here got me worried about the usefulness of HTC Dream. Have a read of the article from: http://androidandme.com/2009/08/news/the-g1-storage-problem-in-charts-and-numbers/

The premise is that each update takes a lot of memory from the in built storage (which is only 256MB). Each expansion and upgrade would significantly grow the size needed on the phone’s memory. Cupcake (Android 1.5) took quite a large chunk, depleting the alleged system storage to nearly zero. It seems that future upgrades are doubtful unless something can be done to trim down the update size or to install another SPL on the phone to reallocate memory allocation.

An excerpt of the relevant part from the article (I plagiarize a lot ) -

The default partition sizes of a T-Mobile G1:

• dev: 49460K
• sqlite_stmt_journals: 4096k
• system 69120K
• data: 76544K
• cache: 69120K

The largest partition is data which is where all your apps are installed.  Many users have experienced this filling up after installing 40-50 apps.  The next largest partitions are system and cache.  System is where the Android operating system is installed and cache is where OTA updates are stored.  Note they are the same size.  The cache needs to remain large so that system updates can be downloaded and stored on the device before flashing.

So how full exactly is the system partition where the Android OS is installed?  Out of an available 69120k of storage, 68780k is being used as of the last official T-Mobile update(CRC1).

This does not affect the latest Android phones or future ones since the base memory size are in the 512MB and above (I assume… for future versions). But the good news (although unofficial) is that the author got a reply from a T-Mobile rep that assured him that there will be future updates. The problem is that, this is a technical limitation, and it may really be a problem for all HTC Dream and T-Mobile G1 owners worldwide. But then, I am not too worried as my phone has been ROOTED. That means, there will be a very capable developer from xda-developers, who would cook a custom ROM that would fit nicely into my phone. Although with some major modifications of course

Anyway, it is a good observation on the part of the article writer Hope to hear more news on this from the developers side (besides the one sourced in the article).

Sigh… cannot believe that this is the ‘end of life’ for my HTC Dream…. just when I am using it as my Mobile workstation