Archive for category phones

GeeksPhone One

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in phones on April 26th, 2010

geeksphoneI came a cross a new phone today called the GeeksPhone One. Their USP seems to be that that phone is rooted out of the box, encouraging enhancement and experimentation.

It’s interesting to see a small company getting into the Android device market. It shows that a small company can compete with the big handset OEMs. If GeekPhone can do this, there’s no reason why such companies can’t exist that provide very different handsets for vertical markets. For example, rugged handsets (this is already happening), handsets for elderly/disabled, handsets that run just one main application (e.g. for ticketing) or any other market that needs a cheap device targeted at a special group of users.

Waiting for Nexus One Device Seeding

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in phones on April 20th, 2010

nexusoneIf, like me, you are still waiting for your Nexus One to arrive then you might like to take a look at the discussion on the Android developer forums on ‘Device Seeding Program for Top Android Market Developers’.

For me, delivery was promised to be 2-4 weeks and it’s nearly 7 weeks now. I am not too concerned because it seems that noone outside the US has received the device seeding phones yet.

UPDATE: Received it on 29 April

T-Mobile Pulse and Testing on Real Devices

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Testing, phones on March 25th, 2010

tmobileIf you are in the UK then you might like to take a look at T-Mobile’s 20% off PAYG phones today only. In particular there’s the T-Mobile Pulse for only £119.99. This is without contract so the total cost of ownership is very small. I actually use one of these for testing on Android 1.5.

I believe it’s important to test on as many real devices, with different versions of the OS, as possible, especially when programming asynchronous tasks.

The emulators only go so far when testing your applications. I have had several instances where the timing of asynchronous things happening (UI vs something in background) have caused things to happen, depending on the device, in a different order. For this reason, it’s best to test on as many real devices as possible.

Android Database Application

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Android Market, Database, Getting Started, My Commercial Apps, SQLite, phones on March 18th, 2010

iconI have just completed and published a database application for Android. It allows databases to be created on the phone or PC (using free 3rd party SQLite tools) and viewed in a list or card format. More information can be found at AndroidDatabase.info.

Developing the application was a lot more difficult than I initially thought because if you use the default framework and database mechanisms provided by the SDK then you run into performance problems with medium size databases.

Relative Costs of Developing for Various Platform

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, phones on March 16th, 2010

thenextwebThere’s an interesting article at Mobile Evolution comparing the relative costs of developing for various platforms. Some highlights with respect to Android…

  • Android is the least expensive for signing/market registration fees.
  • Android is the only modern platform that does not charge a recurring fee to sell on its on-device store.
  • The current lower ratio of apps to users of Android (and Palm WebOS) put a cap on what is achievable for each software title.
  • Android has a comparable ratio of users to apps as iPhone, but its user base is low in comparison, so its market is also capped.
  • The maximum user base is a factor. Android and Palm WebOS will be platforms to watch. If their volumes increase, they will become viable platforms for serious developers.