TheSmiling-Blog

[...] Once a mobiler, always a mobiler [...]

with these words, Sunny Lee, president of Samsung germany, handed over the certicicates of ‘distiguished alumni’ of the samsung mobilers program to the 18 members on January 19th 2010. He told us that he is amazed about what the group achieved in 4 month and was thankful about all ideas and the creativity of the mobilers.

As you already know, I’m one of the 8 mobilers who won the trip to Korea getting the chance to work with the developers over there to get mobile phones to the next level :)

Unfortunately I still have no news concerning mobilers 2.0 – but it was mentioned more than once that this group is not done yet and “that is is not over yet”!

Here’s a picture of my cool samsung mobilers program certificate. It’s been a great time and it will be an aweseome time in the future .. I feel it ;)

For another review you can also check Querweb-Blog from my mobilers (and also group blue) colleague Sabine [in german].

Awesome, I’m one of the 8 mobilers from samsung who won the trip to korea with visits of the samsung developer center, how cool is that?

This actually brings my “mobile world” to a whole new level and I’m really exited to work together with the developers there on new mobile phones.

Today is the second day of the final workshop at samsung headquater germany in Schwalbach. The mobilers now have 4 great month of diving into the mobile scene behind them and the pilot phase of the mobilers concept here in europe has payed off. There will be  mobiler 2.0 campains starting this year in other european countries too. The campaign will also continue in germany but I don’t have an exact picture of what this will look like at the moment. I’ll keep you up to date.

The 18 mobilers who were divided into 3 groups, each of 6 people were not only there for samsung promotion. The 3 groups also came up with new concepts of smartphone applications which they promoted and for which the group members also came up with business models.

Here’s the list of the apps which were designed and the corresponding mobilers group:

• Group blue: http://www.theconferenceapp.com
• Group orange: http://www.audioriver.de
• Group green: http://urbangolf.ignaz.at

I’ll keep you updated on my korea trip. … Oh and by the way: I’m on group blue :)

Ok, here is the promised test on the Samsung Spica (i5700) phone … and some more.
The PDF comparison is in german but I’ll give you my personal result in english here:

If I had the choice between the Samsung Galaxy, the HTC Magic and the Samsung Spica, I’d choose the Spica. A few (unfortunately not all) mistakes Samsung did with the Galaxy are now resolved with the Spica; in particular I’m talking about the battery lifetime. Also the Spica in my eyes can score with it’s style. I can’t exactly tell what is, but compared to the Galaxy it does not feel so heavy and “fat” and it looks more “up-to-date” than the HTC Magic does. (well, actually, it is younger than the Magic ;) )

The OLED Display adds the cherry on the cake; the colors are just awesome and when you hold the Magic beside the Samsung you try to set your display settings for the Magic to brighter and better contrast … but that doesn’t fix the problem!

Unfortunately the Spica is still running on Android 1.5. It is supposed to be able to get updates up to Android 2.0 with the specific Samsung software which is only running on Windows. I haven’t tested any updates yet and I’m actually skeptical about that, but I’ll let you know as soon as I try do do it.

Here’s my detailed  PDF-Comparison for download, enjoy!

Sorry that it took me so long to give you some updates on my blog. I’ve been kinda busy the last weeks. It’s a good new year’s resolution to do at least one blog post every week … we’ll see :)
As you know, I’m one of the 18 Samsung mob!lers around in germany and we are lucky to get some phones like the Samsung Galaxy and now the Samsung SPICA for free, to test the devices and of course promote them here and there a little bit. I’ll get to the SPICA on another blog post so for now, let’s get to Proxoid:

First two words: just awesome
I’m currently not in Frankfurt and depending on my location, vodafone or O2 have the better signal (O2 is my mobilers contract which I unfortunately have to return by the end of January). I’m a few kilometers outside of Coburg right now and my vodafone USB Stick and UMTS flat makes me want to get UPS to deliver me a CD with the data I need.
I decided to only download one file: the USB-Drivers for my Samsung SPICA to get it connected to my computer via the USB debugging bridge. It took me 12 minutes to download a 3.6MB ZIP-file.

After that I installed the USB-driver for the SPICA which worked just fine and I also downloaded Proxoid from the Android market. Open up the app, click on menu and download the proxoid-adb.zip file, copy it to your computer and extract it to some lovely place.
Now follow the easy instructions here to set up your android phone as a proxy for your computer and let’s go … UTMS internet connection with O2.

Don’t forget to set you proxy for all connections if you also want to use your E-Mail- and e.g. Twitter-Client.

As I have a ThinkPad, I just use the ThinkVantage Access Connections Software to set the proxy settings and also execute the start-tunnel batch file when I want to use Proxoid.

Oh, I almost forgot: With Proxoid, you don’t need any root access on your android phone … as I said: just awesome!

I’ve been using my HTC Magic from vodafone for approximately 8 month now and as time goes on I’m downloading more and more apps on to my phone.

The android market takes care of updates on all of your downloaded apps so it reminds you of new app versions every now and then. That’s definitely a very good thing, you don’t have to take care about checking for updates or anything, but:
I just counted my downloaded apps and I almost hit the 50 mark. Wow, 47 apps that I downloaded so far and that are still on my phone. Now, when the android market app tells me that there are new updates for some apps, there are always more than 6 apps to update at the same time.  Have you ever thought exactly about the update process?

1. Open the android market app with the list of updatable apps
2. click on the first app and (maybe) read the (hopefully) new description of the current changes
3. click “update” to update your app
4. click “OK” to the screen that tells you that this app version will replace the old version of this app (no shit Sherlock, it’s an UPDATE!)
5. click “install” to the screen that shows you the permissions this app needs
6. now this app will be downloaded an installed

… and that was only the first of at least 6 apps.

My first question is: Where is the “Update all” button?

Since the user has to give some apps the permission to access phone resources, the internet or whatever, we need a mechanism that can control this issue in  a convenient way. Here’s my idea: android tracks the history of the last permissions that the user already granted during the last install or update. As long as the permissions of this app don’t change, the app will update automatically as soon as I hit the “update all” button. Another alternative, or better, another feature beside an “update all” button would be the possibility to check several apps that I would like to update at once with a “update selected” button.

To sum it up:

• add an “update all” button
• add an “update selected” button with check-boxes for selecting apps
• keep track of already granted permissions of the last app install
• only ask user if permissions of an app have changed

These features should be possible, shouldn’t they?
Help me to enhance the mobile world and tell me about your ideas. Any comments appreciated.

Last night I received the over the air (OTA) Update for my HTC Magic, Android 1.6.

My first check was on the new search bar, which I think is just great. The default settings let you search for your applications, contacts and websites. You can add music to it so it would also search for artists and playlist.
I also discovered the new home screen widget “energybar” (I don’t know if this is the right translation here, but the german word is “Energieleiste”), a bar that offers quick switches for GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Sync and Display brightness. I know, there are plenty of apps who can do that, but I still hope it can turn on my wireless network much more faster than any app can do.

While sitting around in the bus on my way to work, I played with the 1.6 version and discovered the new features:
SpeechSyntheses: a text-to-speech engine … I’m not sure where this is working and how .. but I’m sure I will know by the end of the day :)

To activate the SpeechSyntheses, I had to download this app first and the new android market app popped up: I really like the new design and now apps can show 2 screenshots which is really helpful for the user.

Now let’s get to the feature that I’m really thrilled about: VPN connections
Yes, we are really getting to the business applications now, just awesome. Under “settings > wireless” you now have a VPN-Settings item where you can set up PPTP and L2TP VPNs with pre-shared keys or with certificates. I’m only missing and OpenVPN client, but I’m pretty sure that android will get to it.

So far, I’m really happy with the new update and that vodafone managed to get to it quickly. My #mobilers phone, the Samsung Galaxy, will not get any OTA Updates for Android as far as I know. I have to install the Samsung Software (which only runs on Windows *strange*) and then try to update the phone over USB. I’ll let you know when I update (or try to update) my Galaxy but one fact is already clear: This is everything else but user friendly!

Finally, the picture I took with my Samsung Galaxy of the Update-screen from my HTC Magic while updating to Android 1.6. Isn’t that paradox :) (sorry for the quality, I just woke up ;) )

Android 1.6 HTC Update

Yesterday we, and with “we” I mean the Samsung mobilers :) , had a great and interesting day at the Samsung headquarter.

Samsung mobilers … what’s that?

The mobilers are 3 groups, each of 6 persons with diverse backgrounds and interests, that were chosen from a pool of 230 interested parties for this promotion, who will dive into the mobile phone  scene to generate a lot of ideas concerning the improvement of mobile phones and mobile applications.

Every mobiler is equipped with a brand new Samsung Galaxy mobile phone with the android operating system. The idea behind all this is, that average consumers now can talk about their pain with mobile phones, say what is missing or could be done better, to improve mobile phones and help Samsung with the development.
The workshop included presentations about marketing, distribution and business model generation, and of course, a brief introduction to the android operating system on the Samsung Galaxy. We also had a great tour through the Samsung World Hall, the presentation room that shows almost the whole product range of Samsung … wow, did you know, that Samsung produces fridges, backing ovens and washing machines, ha, now I got you ;) Another interesting thing: “SAM SUNG” means “Three Stars”.

The mobilers promotion isn’t a small thing at all: The president of Samsung germany, Sunny Lee, had a few words for us and we are the first mobilers group that improves this promotion outside of asia … awesome!

As you know, I’m already an android user and also developer and I have the HTC Magic since the beginning of this year. I now have the chance to test the devices against each other and tell you about my experience. Just give me some time to get to know the Galaxy better, some buttons are placed at different locations and I have to set up the same applications that I have installed on my HTC. One thing that I can already tell: The display of the Galaxy is better. It’s brighter and the colors are more brilliant than on the HTC Magic.

If you’re interested in the mobilers activities, our twitter tag is #mobilers. As you can see, I came up with a new blog-category especially for the mobilers and will give you updates every now and then. By time, I will also need your help to get your opinion and needs in the mobile world. I hope that you can spare some time for me then to help me get my job done.

Finally I have a few pics for you of the Samsung World Hall with their products:

After a few requests I finally updated my hello widget tutorial to show you how to add some buttons to your widget.

Download the newest version of the tutorial here and get the source code here.

Here’s my promised update on 1.6:

I now have the answer to the updateMillis Problem that I rectently fell into:
According to this discussion here there was a change in 1.6 that the updatePeroide has to be at least 30 Minutes to save battery live. This is currently not documented but someone posted the affected sourcecode:

from appwidget framework source (appWidgetService.java)

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private static final int MIN_UPDATE_PERIOD = 30 * 60 * 1000; // 30 minutes 
long period = p.info.updatePeriodMillis; 
if (period < MIN_UPDATE_PERIOD) { 
       period = MIN_UPDATE_PERIOD; 
}

This obviously causes the problem, that my widget tutorial displaying the current time will NOT work on 1.6 anymore.
Still, due to testing purposes this change is critical in my eyes.

Last night, Android SDK 1.6 was released!

As a good developer, your first official act should be to check your current applications against the new Android version.
Concerning my apps, Metricdroid is good to go for Android 1.6, but my Rundroid+ Widget unfortunately isn’t.

My first interest was the known issue in 1.5 that the AppWidgetProvider won’t call the onDelete()-Method so you had to come up with Jeff Sharkeys workaround code for the onReceive()-Method (check my Widget-Tutorial for more information). Well, as far as I can tell (tested with my widget), this bug belongs to the past.

Unfortunately, it seems that the update periode (the one you configure in your xml-metadata with android:updatePeriodMillis) is not called any more. I tested my widget with a Toast-Message that should pop up every 5000 millis and was placed in the onUpdate()-Method. Same code worked fine on 1.5.

Well, using the update mechanism with updatePeriodMillis isn’t a convenient way at all because you don’t have the chance to reconfigured it, but still: Shouldn’t this still be working?
I planned to change my code so the user can configure the update periode, but now I’m a little bit under pressure to get this up and running. The first android 1.6 phones are announced for the beginning of October.

I’ll keep you updated on my research with 1.6.