Massive Mileage

I really like Android, but here are some things that could be better

There's a lot I like about Android and the Nexus One, mostly that it seamlessly integrates with Google services and that it moves closer to the technical Edge than the iPhone.

But there are a bunch of annoyances, which I hope get fixed in a future release:

• When writing into a text field, the keyboard doesn't show automatically - you need to tap once in the field. This may be ok for devices with a hardware keyboard, but on the Nexus it's just annoying.
• On the other hand, the keyboard doesn't disappear automatically, often hiding the next text field or the Submit/Save/etc button. This may be a problem that some apps are not programmed correctly, but there has to be a way to handle this more elegant by Android itself.
• The date and time picker are far too cumbersome to use. I assume that Apple patented the spinning wheels on the iPhone, but I can't believe that there isn't a better way than adjust date and time with plus and minus buttons, just like on a cheap digital clock. Appointments do often start on the half hour - am I supposed to tap 30 times on plus or minus? Yes, I can enter time and date with the keyboard, but that's not straightforward either.
• Android allows applications to run in the background and they can all play sound at the same time and they are happily doing so, if you're not careful. Besides notification sounds, I never want to hear to two sources at the same time, so there's no reason that Android supports it.
• Setting up sound and vibration modes is too complicated, because every app has it's own settings, which are not always linked to the general ring tone setting. So even if I set the phone on vibrate (which is also not straightforward), it won't vibrate when an e-mail arrives unless I tell it so in the Gmail settings. However, then it would vibrate all the time, even if the phone is not silenced.
• The unlock screen is just a little weird. Drawing a pattern is kind of neat, but I wish I could delay the lock for some time, like the iPhone does. And, for some reason, there's no silencing slider on the lock screen, so you have to use the power button, which takes a little longer.

All that falls under the category minor glitches - let's see when they get fixed.

Are background applications really a problem in Android?

The iPhone famously doesn't allow applications to run in the background, except for some built-in apps like Mail, iPod or Clock. Apple says that this restriction saves battery power and makes the iPhone easier to use. I did agree with that, to some degree, but after using Android for a couple of weeks, things look a little different.

So is Apple right and background applications deteriorate the smartphone experience?

First, background applications can obviously do things that iPhone apps cannot. Remember The Milk, for example, can reliably notify you about due tasks on Android. The iPhone version uses push notifications, which don't work without a network connection, means you cannot rely on being alerted in time. DoggCatcher and Slacker.com can download podcasts and music during the night - the iPhone relies on desktop iTunes to do that. The consequence is that you can operate an Android phone completely without a computer, but not an iPhone, at least if you want to use it as a music player.

On the downside, you have to think a little bit more about how to set up apps in Android. On the iPhone, it's not a problem to install dozens of Twitter apps, because only one can be active at a time. On Android they would all happily sync themselves with Twitter at the same time and suck your battery dry for nothing. For apps that download bigger files, such as DoggCatcher, you need to make sure that it's set to WiFi and/or connected to power only to protect battery life. Every app has its own settings and every app has its own bugs, so don't take it for granted that those settings always work as expected.

Another issue is which app controls the headset button. In my experience, it's random: so pressing the button while listening to Slacker may indeed stop the music or it may start DoggCatcher to play at the same time, which is never what you want. The latter has a setting to always take control over the headset button, but then it doesn't work anymore for the phone, which should have priority in all cases. I hope that Android addresses this in a future release.

I don't see any issues with the battery, but the Nexus One does not get a 3G signal on AT&T so that makes it difficult to compare battery life with the iPhone. Interestingly, though, I don't miss 3G a bit.

Music on Android: Unfortunately Google Listen doesn't work for me

I was pretty excited about Google Listen with its clean user interface and integration with Google Reader. But unfortunately it doesn't work for me, because at least half of the podcasts fail to download. And after a download fails, you have to fetch the podcast episode manually, means staring at the progress while keeping the phone from going into sleep mode. At least, that's the only way I found out how to do this with Listen.

So I'm back to DoggCatcher, which handles downloads better. And it plays video. Definitely worth $7.

Geotagging photos with the Holux M-241 and Aperture

Everybody is going crazy about location these days and one application is to "geotag" photos, means to add a geographical location to its metadata. Flickr supports this for years now, iPhoto supports it since the '09 version and do does Aperture in its recent 3.0 release. On top of this, there are countless applications out there that allow geotagging pictures, such as the Aperture plug-in Maperture.

Now, in order to automatically geotag a photo you can use a GPS device. A few cameras come with a built-in one, such as the Nikon P6000. For all other cameras, you can use a GPS logger, a small device that records its current location every couple of seconds. On the computer this data can be matched with the timestamp on the photo to pretty accurately geotag the photo.

There are a bunch of GPS loggers available, you just need to find them. For example the New York electronic superstore J&R doesn't even know what a GPS logger is. Photography specialist B&H has some in stock, but nobody was able to tell me how they work and if they work with a Mac.

In 2008 I bought somewhat naïvely the Holux M-241 for geotagging pictures taken with a Nikon D70 or D80, only to learn that geotagging was still far away from mainstream. The Holux comes with Windows only software for accessing the data via USB and geo-tagging JPEGs only. On the Mac, you could use its Bluetooth interface for downloading the files using a Java application for mobile phones. But that is not exactly straightforward. 

And it's that's only half way through. There are many different file formats for GPS logs and the M-241 uses a proprietary format that no other application can use. The are actually so many different file formats around that there is the need for a open-source software GPSBabel which translates GPS og formats. But I never got a KML (Googles format) or GPX (some sort of universal exchange format) out of GPSBabel that I could use in Maperture to actually geotag my photos.

Now Aperture 3 is out and it supports import of GPX only. So how about a GPS logger that exports GPX files right away? Again, looking around on the Amazon and B&H websites couldn't find any that provide GPX files on the Mac.

Until I stumbled over the free program HoudahGPS, which acquires the data from a M-241 via Bluetooth and stores it as a GPX file, which can be loaded into Aperture 3. First. you have to pair the M-241 via Bluetooth (these instructions are helpful), but after that it works like a charm.

B&H still has the M-241 for $64 and, as opposed to many other devices, it has a display, which allows to track speed and distance as well. Together with HoudahGPS I can only recommend it for geotagging photos with Aperture 3 on the Mac.

Slacker.com for Android - unfortunately it's just a beta

I was pretty excited about Slacker.com's Android app which caches music offline and refreshes its content overnight. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well: The nightly refresh consistently fails. This morning I had to reboot the phone just to get the app to work again. So I hope they update the app soon and while they are on it they could fix the website for Chrome as well.

Otherwise, at least for me, a subscription wouldn't be worth it.

Getting music on an Android phone with Slacker.com

If I miss the iPhone for something, it's the iPod functionality, which allows me to carry around a large subset of my music library. Android allows this as well, but there's nothing like iTunes, which effortlessly syncs music over. You rather have to copy the music files manually. Also, this requires tethering the phone to the computer, which feels somewhat out of character for Android as a mobile terminal for the cloud.

My first solution are podcasts and there are some excellent ones out there. KRCW, KEXP and NPR have several great ones. I also love Resident Advisor's weekly DJ sets. But sometimes I'd like to have some more control over what I want to listen to, but all the solutions I found so far, were streaming music, which is not very appealing for me as AT&T's network is not the greatest and, of course, it does not work at all in the subway.

Fortunately slacker.com introduced yesterday an Android app with offline caching. It's $5 a month and it allows listening to several pre-defined "radio stations" as well as define your own one based on specific artists or other criteria. On the phone these stations can be marked as cached and can be refreshed automatically, for example overnight when the phone is on WiFi and connected to power.

So far, my impression is mixed. The website itself doesn't work on Chrome, but it works on Safari. Not a big deal, but it always turns me a little bit off if I have to launch a second browser. The overnight refresh didn't work either: in the morning Android greeted me with the offer to kill the Slacker app, which wasn't necessary in the end. The app itself complained that no WiFi was available, which is a flat lie. Anyway, I refreshed manually, which took almost two hours for four stations, but I hope this gets faster for subsequent updates. There are some other bugs too (which interestingly seem to be typical for Android applications and the way they are stacked together).

The music is so far so good, but I actually like to listen to albums in their entirety, which is by definition not possible on an online radio site. For that I hope we see either Rhapsody (Android app currently in beta) or Spotify (not in the U.S) available soon.

One more podcast app for Android

For whatever reason when I searched Google for Android podcast apps, Google's own, Listen, didn't show up near the top. It is, of course, free and looks much more polished than DoggCatcher, but it also is missing lots of bells and whistles, for the better or worse.

Listen's biggest advantage is that it's syncing, kind of, with Google Reader, so you can add podcast right on your desktop, rather than on the tiny screen of the phone. I'm trying it now, let's see how it goes.

How to correctly silence a Nexus One phone

The Nexus One comes with seven hardware controls plus the track ball versus the iPhone's five. But for some reason HTC left out the silencing switch of the iPhone. Android does have a silencing button on the start screen, but only if the phone is not locked. Then you have to press the power button for menu which allows silencing as well as switching to airplane mode. In any cases these are three interactions versus one on the iPhone. Also, the iPhone can be silenced blindly just by reaching into the pocket.

And silencing the Nexus means real silence, it doesn't even vibrate. In order to have it vibrate in silenced mode, like the iPhone, you need to install a free third-party app "vibrate mode by force".

This nicely illustrates the differences between Android and iPhoneOS: the latter gets it right out of the box for most people. But Android allows third-party apps to fix such issues by granting access deeply into the configuration of the phone.

Getting podcasts on Android

It is not simple to get music on an Android phone, so how about podcasts? In the Apple world this all happens through iTunes and you get the lastest episodes automatically, as long as you sync regularly directly to the computer.

On Android this should be a cloud-only solution. I quickly checked out MyPOD and DoggCatcher. Both allow subscribing to podcasts on the device and download them only when connected to a power source and/or via WiFi. For me that means podcasts would be downloaded during the night, which is just fine.

MyPOD has a free and a cheap full version, while DoggCatcher is pretty expensive with $6.99. On the other hand, I couldn't figure out how to use MyPOD with all its little buttons and many screens, so I gave up and forked out the seven bucks. DoggCatcher seems to do what it should, but let's see how it works in real life.

The Nexus One is somewhat smaller than the iPhone and it has a battery with slightly more capacity. But somehow the HTC engineers managed to keep the battery user exchangeable.
So why again doesn't Apple like exchangeable batteries in its mobile devices?