Well, I’ve had my Samsung Captivate for a week. Probably one of the most useful purchases I’ve made in quite sometime. This will be real brief but in the past week I have done pretty everything on this phone. I have paid bills, balanced my checkbook, listened to Little Brother’s entire album discography, wrote this WordPress article, recorded HD video, taken pictures, checked work email, updated my Facebook and Twitter statuses, waste my time playing paper toss, kept track kf appointments, streamed the Bob Marley channel on Pandora, etc.
A couple negatives. First the phone will slow down for some unknown reason. It just becomes really laggy. This happens when the phone is syncing tweets sometimes. The GPS is shot. I can rarely locked on to GPS satellites, even when I am outside with clear skies. Facebook syncing has been broken from day one. This maybe a good thing because I don’t always need this social sites all up in face all day. Hopefully Samsung can work out the kinks in the next update. Battery life is also a but below satisfactory…but then again I’m always using this device.
The positives…there are just so much to list. This thing has so much utility. I’m probably able to conduct all the business in my life on this one device alone.
This was pretty informal, just want to put a few more thoughts out there. Also those pictures might look terrible because they were uploaded using this WordPress app.
There are other items such as AT&T Family Maps and AT&T Hotspots that will remain although those appear to be links to web apps. Â You can also enable sideloading of applications as well. Â I haven’t completed that procedure, but the instructions are available here.
I am going to try something new. Â I have decided to develop applications for both the Android platform and Windows Phone 7 platform. Â The initial applications I will hopefully be bring to both platforms before the year is over with.
Google Reader client with all the features of Speeed Reader
Twitter Trends tracking client
I foresee both of these applications being very very useful. Â I will begin posting updates on my development progress, experiences and comparisons between both platforms, and any tips I can give to make development easier for anyone else looking to develop on either platforms.
You can use the the following links to get all the articles associated with the tags to filter the articles for each respective platform.
If you’ve been following me, you’ll notice I am somewhat biased towards the Samsung Captivate coming to AT&T on July 18th $199.99. Â Just thought I would list all of the review and hands-on articles and videos that debuted this past week.
I am a little late with this, but here are my Android power rankings for released and announced (but not released) Android handsets.
Released Android Devices
HTC EVO 4G
HTC Incredible
Motorola Droid
Google Nexus One
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10
Announced Android Devices
Samsung Galaxy S/Samsung Captivate (AT&T) – 1GHz A8 Samsung Hummingbird/512MB RAM/16GB ROM/Bluetooth 3.0/WiFi BGN/4″ Super AMOLED screen/720P video recording
Motorola Droid X
Motorola Droid 2
Personally, I am extremely partial to the Samsung Galaxy S / Captivate (as it’s called on AT&T). Â The Galaxy has iPhone 4 hardware specs (except the front facing camera) but it runs Android 2.1, but it’s not nearly as big as the HTC EVO 4G or the Droid X. Â In my opinion, those are huge. Â To me, the best of both worlds. Â It’s a good things I had ALL TYPES OF ISSUES trying to preorder an iPhone 4 earlier this week. Â
Sat down for the first time in a while to plan my next mobile software project. Â The two platforms under consideration, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 & Google’s Android….hmm….let me hear some opinions (either leave a comment or shoot me an email).
Personally, I’d get a Nexus One if I could get one for for $199/$299…not $570.  I’m trying to hold out until the Samsung Galaxy S (if it lands on AT&T)….that for the Dell Lightning looks fantastic, even though its a Windows Phone 7 device.
I watched the Steve Jobs present iPhone 4 OS today. Â One of the biggest new features of the iPhone OS 4 is
MULTITASKING!
On the surface, to the average user, this appears as multitasking. Â To me, not so much. Â Apple is using several different clever technologies to give off the impression that iPhone OS 4 can now multitask. Â Let’s break these down.
Background Processes & Services
There are several background processes & services now built in to the OS SDK. Â They enable background processing of audio streaming, and location services for GPS & social networking.voice-over-ip. Â In a nutshell, the developer of Pandora (example) alters the application to use the background audio streaming API to continue to stream audio even when the user switches to another application. Â Pandora is “shut-down (more on this later)”, but the audio streaming service continues to operate. Â There is no need for the Pandora user-interface to remain active when the user is not directly interacting with the application. Â Great! Â Now users can browse the internet in Safari and stream music through Pandora (or whatever app is present). Â Or leave Skype open and receive Skype VOIP calls. Â To be honest, this is clever and I wonder if they’ll add more services as time goes on. Â However, other applications, such as instant messaging apps have to continue to rely on push notifications and from what I can see, those intrusive Apple iPhone notifications still suck. Â If push notifications didn’t interrupt the users, using notifications for IM services is actually preferred (by me). Â Instant messaging apps KILL battery life. Â So push notifications in combination with fast app switching is a great way to tackle this problem.
I wonder if any of these services can run together ie. can I stream Pandora, while signed into Skype, while navigating in the Maps app? Â What if I get a Skype VOIP call while streaming audio? Â I’m sure these questions will be answered in the coming weeks as the developer beta trickles out.
Task Switching
In short, allows you to finish tasks such as file uploads (or downloads) in the background. Â Pretty cool, I’m sure those who have been held hostage by some app uploading pictures and can’t do anything on their iPhone will be grateful.
Fast App Switching
Fast app switching saves the “state” of application and “closes” it when you switch to another application. Â When I say “state” I mean it saves what documents you have open, or your current position in a 3D game. Â This allows the OS to re-open your app when you switch back to it and pick up where you left off. Â Great idea for many applications. Â There is no reason to have to multitask a single player game in the background or have a Note editor in the background wasting processing cycles and battery power.
Apple also added a new user interface element that allows users to quickly switch between “open” programs. Â Two-clicks of the home button brings up a “taskbar” with icons representing running applications. Â So you can switch between applications very quickly.
Wrapup
With all that said, as an engineer, I wouldn’t call this multi-tasking.  I’d call it advanced user task management, but I guess multitasking sounds better, marketingwise.  The methods Apple uses do a great job of appearing to multitask in most use cases, which will be good enough for most of iPhone users.  For me, I’d rather have the OPTION on  what method I’d like…which is why the iPhone nor Windows Phone 7 would be for me…Android.
I’ll have this dilemma. Â My current device (Xperia X1) is literally falling apart in my hands. Â This past week, half of my keyboard went dead for some time. Â Luckily it came back to life. Â I’m going to try and nurse it until the summer time, then I have to make a decision…Android vs. Windows Phone 7 Series devices.
Just a quick blurb. Â I have use Google for pretty much everything…
email
documents
calendar
voice
chat
rss feed aggregation aka Google Reader
Youtube
maps
search
news
So it seems as though an Android device, which I can get now if they would release a AT&T 3G compatible Nexus One! Â Or I can wait for the unique experience of the WPS7 device. Â We’ll see.
On another note, as soon as I can get my hands on some WP7S developer tools, some new applications will be developed and ready for launch in the fall.
