LINux on MOBile - Android 2.1 (Eclair)LINMOB.net is a blog about LINux on MOBile devices. With the PinePhone (Pro) and Librem 5 shipping it is back to report on GNU+Linux on mobile devices.Zola2011-04-04T21:39:00+00:00https://linmob.net/tags/android-2-1-eclair/feed.xmlAcer Stream - Unboxing and first impressions2011-04-04T21:39:00+00:002011-04-04T21:39:00+00:00https://linmob.net/acer-stream-unboxing-and-first-impressions/<p>So I bought myself an Acer Stream, a Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 powered device with an 3.7” WVGA AMOLED screen—sounds similar to the HTC Desire and Nexus One—and well, how shall I put this, it is, but it is cheaper—I was able to buy it for about 220 Euro incl. shipping.</p>
<p>This low pricing comes as no surprise if you look at facts like the number of forum posts about the Acer Stream—it didn't sell that well, most likely a lot worse than Acers previous device, the Acer Liquid. This maybe happened due to the design of the very device, which is unlike its predecessor not sleek and almost a classic—but different, not ugly but.. well—i don't know how to put it. What comes to your mind when you look at it is that it is pretty huge compared to devices that feature a similar screen—it's about 4mm wider than the Nexus One and weighs 140 grams—which is 10 grams more than the Google phone—but that's it. The overall hardware feels good, but I can't tell whether the touchscreens surface is made of glass or plastic—I think it's plastic like the rest of the hardware.</p>
<p>LINMOBnet on YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS251c1B18c">Acer Stream - Unboxing</a></p>
<p>The unit comes with Android 2.1 (Eclair) preinstalled (2.2 (Froyo) Update is available at acer.com/mobile) , with a special interface developed by Acer. Some of you will think “noooo” now, but it isn't too bad and if you really don't like it, you can disable it in Settings -> Applications -> User interface. The result is something pretty similar to “vanilla Android”, there are a few differences, though: The Dialer and Contacts App are Acer made, the Music Player and eMail Camera App aren't the AOSP ones, either.</p>
<p><i>More soon.</i></p>
Personal: Buying a Motorola Phone | Update: NOT!2011-03-16T17:34:00+00:002011-03-16T17:34:00+00:00https://linmob.net/personal-buying-a-motorola-phone-update-not/<p><strong>Update:</strong> <em>Unfortunately I received an email today telling me that the seller that offered the Flipout at this bargain price hasn't enough Flipouts in stock and is unable to order more. This is really sad as I was looking forward to play with a low cost mid end Android handset made by Motorola. I couldn't find a similar deal to buy a Flipout, yet. If I do, I will get one to fulfill my promise of reviewing and tweaking this little device.</em></p>
<p>When I first read, that Motorola would make Android phones, I was quite excited. At that time I had three Motorola phones, all EZX and thus running Linux: A first generation device (E680i) and two second generation ones (A910).</p>
<p>Android, as I understood back then, would make these phones a lot more interesting, as there would be tons of native software—while on EZX it was more about J2ME.</p>
<p>The CLIQ/DEXT, Motorola's first Android phone, wasn't to interesting for me, as I already had a similar, not too different, HTC made phone: The T-Mobile G1.</p>
<p>Then, later, Motorola came up with the first Android 2.0 phone, the Milestone. I was ready to throw money at this device—but then, out of a sudden, the locked bootloader story spreaded and I was turned off. So turned of, that I didn't buy it, and in fact, no other Android handset since the G1. I didn't like the design of HTCs later phones, and while I really liked what Motorola came up with (especially the Milestone2 and the Defy), I always felt like: Android isn't fun without custom ROMs—back than I already was a heavy CyanogenMod user.</p>
<p>Now, today, I ordered a Motorola Android phone. It's an ARMv7 powered phone and it was really cheap: 99€ including shipping without any contract. As you might guess, this isn't a Defy, Milestone, Milestone XT720 or even Milestone 2—it's the Motorola Flipout, a phone with decent specs, as long as you don't mention the screen. But hey, it's small and has a hardware keyboard which seems to be just big enough, and since my G1s hardware keyboard is broken since CeBIT.. well, I just had to buy it.</p>
<p>I will test the device, and if Motoblur is too annoying, I will “deblur” it and tweak it as far as possible without a custom ROM—JIT, Apps2SD and so on.</p>
<p>I am quite excited how this Motorola phone will feel when I'll hold it in my hands. If it is astonishing and I notice that I can live without the latest Android release I might be tempted to get another Motorola Android phone—or start / support a petition to persuade Motorola to leak open bootloaders for the phones they discontinued (= no updates to later Android releases) way to early.</p>
3 x TI OMAP 3 powered devices to be reviewed here soon2011-03-14T16:54:00+00:002011-03-14T16:54:00+00:00https://linmob.net/3-x-ti-omap-3-powered-devices-to-be-reviewed-here-soon/<p>Right now there are three devices on their way to me, and oddly enough, they all run on the same, dated SoC. Besides that, the three are pretty different: One runs Android (2.1), one webOS (2.1.0) and the third one a LiMo compliant operating system. Display resolutions differ, too: QVGA, HVGA and WVGA, while display sizes vary from 2.8” to 3.5”. </p>
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<p>While there are tons of posts on my “to be done” list that I can write without a single new device, I felt like I would need some new hardware in my hands as the stuff I have is half dead—at CeBIT my G1's hardware keyboard broke, and my Pre (minus) has a broken headset jack and will be picked up for repair soon.</p>
<p>Wasting some money on low cost devices feels awkward—but well, for the money I spent on these three devices I could have bought one cheap (non dual-core) super phone, that's why I chose this option.</p>
SmartQ N7: Not too special, but...2011-01-30T20:21:00+00:002011-01-30T20:21:00+00:00https://linmob.net/smartq-n7-not-too-special-but/<p>Today I had yet another look at the website of the chinese manufaturer SmartQ, who are well known for their Linux/Android/CE MID/tablet devices.</p>
<span id="continue-reading"></span>
<p>And, guess what? On the chinese version of their website I found a device that hasn't been covered by all major techblogs yet—some did, but the really huge ones didn't: <a href="http://translate.google.de/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.smartdevices.com.cn/product/N7/">The SmartQ N7</a>.</p>
<p>Being honest I must admit that this doesn't exactly surprise me; the N7 isn't that different from the well known V7 at the first glance, it features the same Telechips TCC 890x 720MHz ARM11 (ARMv6) SoC with 1080p video playback, 256MB Ram. But it is different: The screen has a better resolution, WSVGA instead of WVGA—and the touchscreen is this time piezoelectric multi touch, which is both quite an improvement.</p>
<p>What' s not so great is the fact, that the device still ships with Android 2.1 (Eclair), Froyo (2.2) is said to be following in March (<a href="http://www.millennius.com.au/store/tablet-pads/millennius-smartq-n7.html">according to an australian shop</a>)… no information about Gingerbread (2.3) or the too be released Honeycomb 3.0 (which is the first version of Android optimized for tablets).</p>
<p>While I think that the SoC is fast enough if you are not too picky, I doubt that 256MB will be much fun with future iterations of the Android OS—the N7 may be able to run Honeycomb (if Honeycomb won't be ARMv7 only)—but it won't be much fun with this amount of RAM.</p>
<p>If you are aware of this, and just want a cheap tablet with multitouch and HDMI, I consider the N7 (depending on its price point) quite an option.</p>
Dual-SIM Android Smartphones2011-01-26T17:41:00+00:002011-01-26T17:41:00+00:00https://linmob.net/dual-sim-android-smartphones/<p>When I first heard about Dual SIM smartphones, I almost couldn't believe that there were devices like this—back then (2008?) all Dual SIM phones were from rather unknown chinese manufacturers, often with KIRF looks and running an OS which you couldn't really call a smartphone OS—all smartphonish about these devices were their touchscreens.</p>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;margin-left: 1em;text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a href="dstl1_01m.jpg" style="clear: right;margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto"><img src="dstl1_01m.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center">General Mobile DSTL1—image by General Mobile</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>As usability matters to me (and most of you, I assume) these devices really didn't seem to be a good choice, and so I rather went on carrying to phones (back then two EZX phones). Then Android came up, and I had high hopes for a smartphone with this operating system, be it just a basic AOSP version or the full experience with GMail, GTalk and Android Market. </p>
<p>The first dual SIM smartphone that really catched attention was the General Mobile DSTL1 running Android 1.5 (Cupcake), which was announced at the MWC in 2009. Back then it had ok specs, 128MB Ram, a 624MHz Marvell PXA310 (ARMv5TE / XScale) SoC—it lacked 3G though, was EDGE only.</p>
<p>Since then we haven't seen much but announcements. Motorola (and others, like ZTE) have launched
some Dual-SIM phones in China, but since these are mostly (in fact all Motorola Dual-SIM phones I know of) CDMA+GSM, importing them to Europe doesn't help.</p>
<p>The most interesting device right now isn't quite a real smartphone, nor would one call it's internals high end by 2011 standards: It's the Shenzhen ACT Dion WO 4.8” MID phone <a href="http://twitter.com/charbax">charbax</a> (the man behind <a href="http://armdevices.net/">ARMDevices.net</a>) <a href="http://armdevices.net/2011/01/08/shenzhen-act-4-8-capacitive-marvel-pxa935-clamshell-android/">spotted at CES</a>. It had been first mentioned back in October at <a href="http://www.pocketables.net/2010/10/dion-computers-prototype-48-inch-clamshell-android-mid-revealed.html">pocketables.net</a>. To name the basic facts:</p>
<ul>
<li>Marvell PXA935 (“tri-core”/Sheeva, supports ARMv5TE, ARMv6 and ARMv7 architectures (so flash might be possible)) SoC, </li>
<li>256MB of RAM, ROM/NAND/Flash memory unknown, microSD </li>
<li>DualSIM (once quad band EDGE + tri band WCDMA (3G) with HDSPA up to 3.6Mbps, once european (900, 1800, 1900) GSM with EDGE tri band (apparently the latter is achieved with a NXP5209 chip, no information about the other baseband chip (probably MTK?))</li>
<li>WLan b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, GPS, chinese TV, FM Radio</li>
<li>clamshell form-factor with QWERTY keyboard and optical mouse (just like the one on the Samsung SGH-i780)</li>
<li>4.8” WVGA capacitive touchscreen</li>
<li>front facing 1.3M camera (probably nice for video chat)</li>
<li>1920mAh battery for up to 4.5 hours talk time / up to ten days standby time</li>
</ul>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;margin-left: 1em;text-align: right"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center"><a href="dion-mid.jpg" style="clear: right;margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto"><img src="dion-mid.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center">Dion WO 4,8” MID (image from pocketables.net)</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>Of course this thing is huge (135 * 85 * 20mm, which almost similar to the 131.6 * 79 * 21.6mm HTC Universal (QTek9000/T-Mobile MDA Pro/…)) and Android 2.1 (Eclair) isn't too attractive nowadays (Gingerbread (2.3) brings Video chat, Froyo (2.2) is the minimum for Flash 10.1)—but if you've got large pockets, don't worry about no support and want Dual SIM really badly, this might be just the right device for you (bulk order price is said to be about 200$ each (but bulk order means large quantities). (If you are really interested in this thing, check out <a href="http://forum.androidspin.com/showthread.php?4577-Storm1-%28Dual-SIM-MID%29/">this thread at androidspin.com</a>.)</p>
<h3 id="conclusion">Conclusion:</h3>
<p>With 512MB and a dedicated community that hacks the crap out of it, this could be a really great device—but being a pessimistic person I don't see that happening.</p>
<p>Despite this thing (which is, while not the best imaginable the best I could track down, (on the internet, not in real life)) you find some devices at eBay which are mostly MTK6516 based—which is a SoC that has a 460MHz ARM9 + a 280MHz ARM7 core—doesn't sound like high speed, does it? At least most of these things have a low WQVGA screen resolution (240x400 pixels) and 256MB Ram, so the user experience might be actually not totally ruined—but nontheless these are low end solutions which I will not recommend before I have had a satisfying hands on.</p>
<p>All in all, the Dual SIM market didn't improve much, even though there is such a powerful mobile OS like Android available for free—and to be honest, this is not too much of a surprise: Only small “outlaw” companies can afford making nice Dual SIM solutions—the big players prefer not to upset the huge network operators.</p>