Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tethering on Android doesn't require an additional plan.
So? What does that have to do with the actual phone.
Until phone and carrier can be separated, the twain are one as far as I am concerned.
Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android
51–57 of 57 posts
Re: Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android
#52His fundamental argument is logically flawed on a very basic level. It's simply insane to think that an ecosystem that has been operating in a certain manner for its entire existence will suddenly change directions and begin operating in a massively different manner. It's not going to happen. Betting on a platform that may in the future become awesome instead of voting on a phone that you admittedly think might be th…
> It's simply insane to think that an ecosystem that has been operating in a certain manner for its entire existence will suddenly change directions and begin operating in a massively different manner.
Are you talking about the future of the Android market?Continued growth is hardly operating in a "massively different manner." Expecting something as fluid as a marketplace not to change is far more unreasonable than expecting change.
> Betting on a platform that may in the future become awesome instead of voting on a phone that you admittedly think might be the best phone on the market is as crazy as betting on a horse that looks like it has the potential to win instead of the horse that is winning.
The author thinks that the iPhone might be the best "overall", but that Android is a better fit for him personally. Your horse analogy doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either.
Consider the next two years (typical smartphone lifespan) a horse race. Right now, Apple's horse is ahead, but Google's horse, while taking longer to accelerate, is now moving faster than Apple's horse. Which horse do you bet on?
Re: Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android
#53Re: Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android
#54The big problem Android has is leaving people behind. It turns out v1.6 is required just to use Kobo's eBook reading software. What of all those v1.5 devices still out there? SOL! Some people can say, eh, this is the early adopter problem, except these are phones being sold to everyday people, not techies.
There are still 1.5 devices out there? Like what?
The HTC Hero, for one. First post-1.5 release was about a week ago (to 2.1), there won't be any others and most phones probably don't have it yet.
Re: Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: This is for my experience only: - Tethering. I fly frequently, so sitting in the airport with a free wifi connection is nice. - Navigation. Nav is just that much nicer than directions. - GVoice integration. I'm a big fan free texts and transcribed voicemails. - Cost. My total bill, including insurance, is $75/month, with 5 numbers of unlimited calls. I probably make 600-800 minutes worth of calls/month. I…
> Webserver. I found a built-in webserver, so I can pull photos/etc. off my phone even if I don't have my USB. There are other ways to do this, but it suits me particularly well. I had no idea this kind of functionality existed. As an iPhone owner, I'm envious. I'm curious about your experience with Swype. I've read a little about it and I'm wondering: do you think Swype obsoletes the traditional advantage hardware k…
I love Swype. It's unclear to me that I'm actually faster at this point, but I downloaded a speed test app -- I clocked myself at 47 wpm in one run, 100% accuracy. Cherry-picking the best number, to be sure, but still.
More importantly, it felt like the switch from button-mashing to T9. Swype is the way typing on a touchscreen should work: gestures that know what you want. So many of the brilliant idioms popularized by the iPhone (pinch zoom, left/right swipe to get between screens) are, in my opinion, why touch screens work at all for a phone. Buttons are unsatisfying due to the lack of tactile feedback; gestures feel natural and expressive. Given all that, making gestures the way you enter text makes me that much happier using the phone for typing at all.
To answer your question: Swype is in no way a replacement for a traditional keyboard. It's a language entry tool, and it's as useless as the stock iPhone/Android keyboard for things like keyboard shortcuts and arbitrary strings. As far as I can tell, I'll never move to a touchscreen keyboard for regular work because it's such an efficient interaction tool (if you live in tools like emacs/vim/command line like me). Swype actually limits the overall universe of your input[1], but it makes the common mode of language very easy.
Short answer: no, Swype doesn't try or succeed in replacing hardware keyboards.
Now that you've got me thinking about it, though, a full-sized Swype keyboard set up with better modified key support and a dictionary that included keyboard shortcuts in the app you were working in would be pretty great. Take vim: all those 2-4 letter combinations you type all the time would be available to you, and you could apply heuristics based on your document to help fill in more free-form keys like find-replace strings. You could even find ways to structure the shortcuts around easy directions, essentially re-inventing keyboard shortcuts as well-placed single swipes of a finger. Somebody with more time than I have now could work that into a neat proof of concept.
[1]I mean, you can still use it like the stock keyboard, but that's not the kind of interaction I'm talking about.
Re: Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android
#56Something along the lines of, "Choice only matters if your choice is one of the choices," applies. Apple wasn't offering him his choice so he bought an Android. Yet he still acknowledges that the iPhone 4 may be a better phone. His four main points are: openness, momentum, cloud, and capability. Android is definitely more open than iOS but Android's power depends on non-open software/services (Google). Android defini…
>His four main points are: openness... Actually, openness is not one of his points. He mentions it in passing only. >Android definitely has momentum but at their current rate it will still take years to match the iPhone's share of the market. From February to May of this year, Android went from 9% to 13% of the market. In that same time, the iPhone went from 25.4% to 24.4%. At that rate, it will take about six months…
I checked our server stats this morning & at least over here in Germany, Apple iOS device growth is still outpacing Android growth. My guess is that while the absolute number of Android devices is growing, the number of people actually using those devices for browsing the web is simply not growing as fast. This won't change until Android offers a browsing experience that bests the ease-of-use of iOS devices.
Re: Why I Turned In My iPhone and Went Android
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Webserver. I found a built-in webserver, so I can pull photos/etc. off my phone even if I don't have my USB. There are other ways to do this, but it suits me particularly well. I had no idea this kind of functionality existed. As an iPhone owner, I'm envious. I'm curious about your experience with Swype. I've read a little about it and I'm wondering: do you think Swype obsoletes the traditional advantage hardware k…
I love Swype. It's unclear to me that I'm actually faster at this point, but I downloaded a speed test app -- I clocked myself at 47 wpm in one run, 100% accuracy. Cherry-picking the best number, to be sure, but still. More importantly, it felt like the switch from button-mashing to T9. Swype is the way typing on a touchscreen should work: gestures that know what you want. So many of the brilliant idioms popularized…
Also thought I would mention SlideIT, which is a replacement keyboard similar to Swype and is available already for Windows Mobile Symbian and Android as a free trial and a paid app.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRkRaoIw8Io